Much has been said about the business of the integrators as the general air cargo industry psychoanalyses itself trying to figure out what happened to its once lucrative business. Modal change to ocean freight, yes indeed part of the equation, but as was so poignantly highlighted by FedEx chairman Fred Smith at last year’s Los Angeles World Cargo Symposium, its modal change to the integrators that the mainstream industry should most be worried about.
Why? Because after four decades, the mainstream air cargo market has not only not made progress on speed, it’s actually gotten worse – sliding from three days nearly 40 years ago to six or more days on average currently. Compare that to the integrators door-to-door delivery in much less time with a high degree of transparency to boot.
This topic was again at the forefront of discussions at the recent Air Cargo Handling Conference in Milan last month on how the handling part of the business could help do its part in remedying this nagging problem. Payload too was there to cover the event, but alas, a key part of our presence – hardcopies of our magazine – were strangely absent. And this, our dear friends is the impetus behind this month’s Belly Ache!
In preparation for the event one of our colleagues duly sent off a pack of 300 magazines via DHL Express, destined for the Sheraton Milan Malpensa.
Everything started well… the parcel was collected by DHL at 15:25 on 9 September which gave it a nice cushion time since the event didn’t start until the 17th. The good news to all this is that the parcel did arrive, the bad news is, it arrived on the last day of the event – a whole NINE DAYS later! It would have been honestly the same amount of time and a lot less money to just throw it on a boat for goodness sake.
The best part of this story is that in no time at all the package, via Leipzig and Cologne, made its way to Bergamo, Italy in just two short days – but once there, it went no further! We’re not sure what they were doing with it there, it seems to have generated a dozen entries on the tracking report without actually going anywhere. Maybe those wacky warehouse guys were playing ‘pass the parcel’ with it, or maybe the aunty was cleaning the warehouse and kept moving it from shelf to shelf in order to clean.
In actual fact, we found out that… hmmm, something like eight days after it arrived at the Bergamo warehouse it was actually hung up in Customs because they wanted some money out of us! I mean really, in the year 2014 they want to charge duty on a bunch of magazines destined for an air cargo conference? Oh yes, Italian Customs, we have you in our sights for a future Belly Ache.
But what galls us almost as much as having to pay duty on the magazines, is the fact that had we not started calling and asking questions, we would never have known the magazines were being held for ransom! Yes, yes we know what you’re going to say DHL – there’s a little box to tick on the documentation saying something like – Destination duties/taxes tick ‘Receiver’, ‘Shipper’, ‘Other’ – which would automatically charge the sender and release the package, but for that ‘service’ DHL charges the tidy sum of $35! We’re starting to understand why the integrators are the only ones making money. And there are SMS and email alerts one can subscribe to that presumably might (or maybe not) have informed us of the hijacking of our mags.
Unfortunately for us, the shipment was sent by a relative newbie in our company, who has just undergone a very steep learning curve on the ins and outs of express shipping.
But coming back to the real issue as we see it – why on earth would you provide such a wonderful service (in theory, at least) complete with detailed web tracking, etc. and yet leave such a gaping hole as this in which a shipment could conceivably just linger in perpetuity without the customer even being informed!?! We’re truly gob smacked over that one and more than a little inclined to try the ‘purple’ or ‘brown’ team next time.
And so, to all the mainstream air cargo gang out there who are crying in their collective beers, or at least gazing deeply into their navels over the state of the industry – take heart! Even the mighty integrators have their foibles! ‘Delivered as promised’? Pffffftttt we say.
