DHL owns the entire airport in Wilmington, Ohio. Some of the cost savings would be from the elimination of all the costs of owning and running your own airport. Not only does DHL pay ABX to repair the runways, mow the grass, plow the snow, and change the light bulbs in the taxiways, they also pay to maintain the ILS's, staff the tower, staff the fire house, provide security, maintain parking lots, administer the airfield operations, etc, etc. On top of those expenses, DHL pays ABX a 1.75% over ride as the contractor that operates the airfield. At CVG, obviously the government pays all of those costs.
DHL paid $6 or $7 million a year in CVG as landing fees. $6 or $7 million is a fraction of what DHL pays to run ILN.
As far as the workers moving, a quick of your Google Earth shows that the two airfields are 52 miles apart. Many of the CVG workers never had to move when ILN ops began due to the close proximity of the two facilities and I suspect (especially with the Wilmington housing market headed down the toilet) that many workers would simply reverse that and commute to CVG.
The sort facility at CVG would require no expansion as the volume that we currently carry in ILN is below the max capacity of the abandoned CVG sort.
Some of the savings from a Plantation HQ closure are being realized as we speak. The Plantation workforce has been slashed and there is an obscene amount of vacant office space at the DHL HQ down there. DHL administration was very top heavy and expensive.
By shifting the flying, they are tripping over dollars to pick up dimes (don't most airlines do this?). The reason DHL is losing money in the US (if they really are at all) is NOT due to the airlines that do their flying. This is simply a brazen move to create a de facto merger when they both realize that a literal merger would be illegal.
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