It’s not over, but it is: DHL has won the 2007 edition of the “Great Package Race” competition dreamed up by Professor John Barthold at Georgia Tech, where the three main parcel shippers are annually to see which can get packages the fastest to challenging locations all over the globe.

The packages were shipped on April 13 from Atlanta to five extremely difficult locations. While not all the packages have been delivered, Georgia Tech has already declared DHL the winner (see The Great Package Race, 2007). As of April 20, DHL had delivered all of its packages. As of April 25, FedEx had delivered three packages, one was being held for some kind of payment, and one had been declined. UPS had delivered two packages, had another still en route, was returning another (“service not available”), and had declined to take one.

The locations were challenging, to say the least:

• Apia, the only city on Upulu, one of the islands comprising the country of Samoa, in the western Pacific Ocean. Upulu has no street addresses.
• Florianopolis, an island off the coast of southern Brazil just above Uruguay; considered by the carriers to be a “remote area.”
• Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, which is currently experiencing hyperinflation and political unrest.
• Tikrit, birthplace of Saddam Hussein and a center of Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
• Yangon, until recently, capital of Myanmar, one of the most isolated countries in the world. The city was formerly known as Rangoon, Burma.

So just how much does it cost to ship a package to Tikrit these days? DHL did it for $125.26, and got it there in 4 days.