Delivery Contest: DHL Stomps UPS and FedEx

A map of how the carriers routed their packages to Tikrit, Iraq, during the Great Package Race. CREDIT: Georgia Institute of Technology

If you need to send a package to Lomé, Togo, DHL may be your best bet for getting it there on time and intact.

Major package carriers were recently put to the test to see which company could deliver a package to remote and challenging locations the fastest and in the best condition.

The Great Package Race, conducted by Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, sent identical boxes by UPS, DHL and FedEx from the starting line in Atlanta, Georgia to remote locations all over the world.

This year’s locations included: Yangon, Myanmar; Tikrit, Iraq (a center of the Sunni insurgency); Floranopolis, Brazil (a small island); Harare, Zimbabwe; and Apia, Samoa.

Unaware that a race was even going on, the carriers picked up the packages on April 13 and the race began.

Students tracked the packages online as they were taken across oceans, rivers, jungles and sometimes transported by bicycle to locations that often didn’t have an official street address.

DHL stomped the competition, delivering their packages first to three of the five locations and finishing second at two others. (FedEx and UPS each finished first at one location.)

Most packages arrived within a week or two, but one has yet to be delivered or returned, and the mistakes in delivery were often entertaining: One package was sent back-and-forth across the Atlantic nine times before it was delivered, and another was sent to Costa Rica instead of Croatia.

And just as in a road race, the sprint to the finish proved the most difficult part of the package’s journey, as packages usually arrived in the general vicinity of their destination, but then finding the exact locale was harder.

The race provides a window into carrier operations for logistics students, and carriers often share their pitfalls and success stories with the students.

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