DHL's History of Self-destruction
From the day the Germans bought DHL Worldwide Express, they have made one stupid decison after another, and now, with the company in ruins at its feet, DHL is holding a gun to its own head and putting pressure on the trigger.
I got off the Titanic a few days before DHL announced last month that it is scrapping its air operations in the United States and contracting for DHL shipments with rival UPS. My retirement date is later this month. But for 500 other pilots at ASTAR Air Cargo (formerly DHL Airways) and for several hundred more at Airborne Express Air pilots, plus several thousand DHL employees who are in mid-career, the results of DHL mismanagement are devastating.
Here is a link to a short video created by an ASTAR pilot that says it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HkXuLgt4ak
I got off the Titanic a few days before DHL announced last month that it is scrapping its air operations in the United States and contracting for DHL shipments with rival UPS. My retirement date is later this month. But for 500 other pilots at ASTAR Air Cargo (formerly DHL Airways) and for several hundred more at Airborne Express Air pilots, plus several thousand DHL employees who are in mid-career, the results of DHL mismanagement are devastating.
Here is a link to a short video created by an ASTAR pilot that says it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HkXuLgt4ak
posted by Eric Rush | 11:16 AM
4 Comments:
True, the Germans made some bad business decisions but I also don't think they expected a costly war in Iraq, skyrocketing fuel prices and an American economy in recession.
Good point, Doug, but you don't see UPS and FedEx spiraling down the toilet.
DHL's first mistake was buying Airborne Express, a freight company with its own, non-standard loading system incompatible with anyone else's.
The biggest mistake followed soon after, that of firing the DHL people--the people who built DHL and felt like members of a corporate family--and relying instead on Airborne's cheaper, independent contractors. Efficiency suffered, and customers left DHL, often to follow the DHL people they'd been dealing with to their new jobs at UPS and FedEx.
What sent the boat over the waterfall was moving DHL Airways/ASTAR to Wilmington, Ohio, to merge ASTAR's flights with ABX Air's at the airport Airborne owned. Not only was there insufficient training of ABX ground people to load ASTAR airplanes, DHL made no apparent effort to educate the Airborne ground people about the new corporate structure. Airborne people considered themselves to be Airborne, not DHL, and there was extreme resentment of ASTAR's perceived intrusion on Airborne turf.
For weeks after the move to Wilmington, ASTAR airplanes were loaded last and were often several hours late departing. ASTAR pilots' cars, identifiable by stick-on parking stickers, were vandalized in the employee parking lots by ABX personnel who considered ASTAR an invader.
It wasn't just the economy that reduced DHL's customer base. It was poor service resulting from the poorly planned integration of ABX Air and ASTAR and an extremely expensive operation for DHL in Wilmington where it apparently had little control and oversight of cost-plus contractors. ASTAR pilots were appalled at the waste and inefficiency they saw in the Wilmington operation and longed to move back to their brand new, but abandoned, sort facility.
DHL bought Airborne Express as a quick way to increase lift, but growth was negative, and DHL no longer needed the additional airplanes, but it was stuck with long-term contracts.
Now the chicken is hiring the fox to carry its eggs. This should be interesting...
Interesting theory on the demise of a whole community. It wasnt abx fault this tanked it was greedy ceos a greedy mayor and total mismanagement of a company that 5 years ago was making money every quarter.Astar couldnt tow the line so they bought us and sank us all together.dhl is good at what they do eliminate competition.
this doesnt really matter
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