DHL may be owned by Deutsch Post now, but the whole history of the
company is very non-German. For early days and worldwide growth, read my
ex-boss Jane Chung's massive and meticulously-researched "DHL: Three
Letters That Shrank The World".
In 1979, I worked for Rapid Data in Hong Kong, a DHL subsidiary building
a word processor (largely clone/ripoff of a Wang WP of the day). Larry
Hillblom (the H of DHL) wanted to get into the electronic document
transfer business too, sending documents over communications links
worldwide between WPs in DHL offices (or, for large customers, selling
them their own WPs). Concept was good and would have worked, but DHL
internal politics killed the scheme for many reasons after about 2 years.
Hardware work was done in California (Los Gatos), programming and
manufacture in Hong Kong, first deployments of early version in Bahrein
and Saudi Arabia. When I needed to travel between offices (easy as a
dual Brit / Canadian, no visas needed anywhere), I flew in place of the
regular courier. You showed up at the airport, met the DHL agent who
gave you a handful of baggage tags (BAH-LHR typically one ton of
documents each way daily, 45 or so giant green canvas bags, DHL had a
special ship-as-much-excess-baggage-as-you-wish-with-a-courier-on-board
deal with many airlines, BA this case), met the DHL agent on arrival and
handed over baggage tags, walked away. Special treat one time was
BAH-LHR return as courier to go up to Bromsgrove (Birmingham area) to my
gran's 90th b'day party. Not too special treat was spending a month in
Bahrein; excitement was trying to keep equipment working at a trade show
(MECOM) in massive tents with breezes off the desert, no A/C, air temp
40C+, RH < 10%.
Michael
On 2020-12-17 6:09 p.m., Moose wrote:
On 12/17/2020 2:28 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
What's a riot for us is when we order something that is being
fulfilled direct from China. I can track it across the Pacific where
it lands in Anchorage, then on its way again to Memphas, Cincinnati,
or some other major processing hub in the eastern half of the USA. A
week later, it finally makes its way back to Anchorage.
And that's for three-day delivery!
DHL is easily the most convoluted of them all.
Well, they are German, and of a German bureaucracy!
Their roots are very different from systems like UPS and FedEx. Back
in the 70s, they were offering personal courier service for high
value, high urgency business documents. We knew a guy who was a
courier for them. When he wanted to fly somewhere, he'd show his
availability. Pretty soon, he'd be on a plane, with a case of
documents. If there was enough stuff, they'd pay for an extra seat
beside him.
This from Wikipedia agrees with my memories of what he was doing. He
mostly used it to the East Coast and Europe.
Deutsche Post acquired them over 1998-2002 and applied the name to
many other of their services.
Memories are Made of Moose
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