SCDigest
Editorial Staff
SCDigest Says: |
USPS priority mail, the cheapest ($6.95), was first to Opp. UPS arrived a few hours later ($16.82); and FedEx ($17.58), 24 hours after that.
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Once again, The Supply Chain & Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech has conducted its annual Great Package Race for 2009, a student-managed project in which parcels are sent by leading express providers to hard-to-reach locations around the globe. The goal is to see who can best “deliver” on time and cost.
The project is the brainchild of Dr. John Bartholdi, who has been running the contest since 2003. The event is usually held in the Spring, but was moved to the Fall for 2009.
This year, two destinations were chosen:
- Ulan Bator, capital city of Mongolia; and
- Opp, Alabama, USA, a small town (population 6,000) in southern Alabama.
This year, the school did not pre-announce the start, so that competitors (DHL, FedEx, UPS, and the USPS) could not anticipate and plan for the race.
As usual, the packages were “anonymously sent," this year using a local store in Atlanta (Kwik Copy) that feeds UPS, FedEx, and DHL. The ship date was October 5.
KwiK Copy could not handle the USPS shipments because, after 9/11, all large packages to be mailed through the postal service must be presented for inspection at a postal facility. As a result, the students immediately drove to a nearby post office to mail the remaining packages via the postal service.
Interestingly, the group says that “In both Kwik Copy and the post office, the clerks seemed quite matter-of-fact about accepting parcels to Ulan Bator, but they expressed some incredulity about whether Opp is a real place.”
The packages contained Georgia Tech-logoed materials; in addition, the packages sent to Mongolia had some food and other supplies for local charities.
DHL was not a participant in the parcels sent to Opp, as the company dropped its US domestic service in early 2009.
(Transportation Management Article - Continued Below)
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