Jurassic Jet
Freight Trash
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2005
- Posts
- 227
But we knew that anyways. Graber admits thousands of jobs are on the line.
http://www.wnewsj.com/main.asp?SectionID=49&SubSectionID=156&ArticleID=166512
[FONT=ARIAL BLACK, ARIAL, SANS SERIF]6,000 air park jobs to be lost[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]GARY HUFFENBERGER[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]Staff Writer[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The parent company of DHL said Wednesday it will change to a new partner for its air shipments within North America, a move that’s expected to mean the loss of about 6,000 to 6,100 ABX Air jobs in Wilmington.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The planned deal between DHL and UPS also is expected to have a major impact upon ASTAR Air Cargo. ASTAR and ABX are DHL’s current air carriers for the shipments UPS will transport in the future. ASTAR has hundreds of employees based at the DHL Air Park in Wilmington.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]ABX Air’s night sort operations will be eliminated because the night sort serves, and is served by, the air cargo network whose function will be performed by UPS, said ABX Air President John Graber.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]Graber on Wednesday said it was “a grim day for ABX Air, frankly for the Wilmington community, for the county, for the state.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The ABX president added, “This is going to be really hard on thousands of employees and thousands more family members, and people in the community.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“We tried to talk about this openly, honestly and face-to-face with our employees, and tell them that none of them deserve it. And that it’s a really, really hard thing to go through and we’ll help each other get through it,” Graber said late Wednesday afternoon.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]At a press conference in the Bonn, Germany headquarters of Deutsche Post World Net (DPWN), which is DHL’s parent company, DPWN Chief Executive Officer Frank Appel said the restructuring of DHL’s business in the United States involved a “comprehensive and radical plan.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The U.S. division of DHL has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually. DHL Express CEO John Mullen, at the Bonn press conference, called it DPWN’s “biggest problem by far.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The changes entailed in the restructuring plan, said Mullen, show that DPWN is prepared “to take radical and decisive action” to make U.S. operations viable.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]When the restructuring has been fully implemented, Graber projects ABX Air will have a workforce of about 900 or 1,000 in Wilmington. Presently, in round numbers, ABX Air employs about 7,000 people at the DHL Air Park in Wilmington.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“You can’t overstate how important this is to us. And neither can you say it’s the last nail in the coffin. I don’t think that’s fair,” Graber said.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]Graber said he believes ABX will run the daytime sorting of DHL ground freight indefinitely. “But that’s really the only piece that’s left as we understand their plan,” he added.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“They’ve told us to plan on a day sort for an open-ended period of time,” he continued. DHL officials, Graber said, did not state a number of years or number of months for the day sort operations.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“They just said they don’t have plans to stop that service, and they would anticipate that that would continue to be done here,” Graber said.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]He added, “We have told DHL we want as much of their business as they want to let us have. And we will compete for it and fight to make sure we have as much of a presence in their operation in Wilmington as is possible. My sense of it is that DHL isn’t going to have much of a presence in Wilmington compared to what they have today should the UPS piece go through. So, I don’t know that we’ll have much to fight for.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]There are about 3,100 night-time sorters employed by ABX Air in Wilmington, some of them area farmers who want the health insurance coverage and extra cash provided by their moonlighting.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]During the Bonn press conference, Mullen said Wilmington would not be operating as a domestic air hub for DHL.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]DHL Americas Director of Corporate Communications Jonathan Baker said the DHL Air Park in Wilmington currently serves as DHL’s largest ground hub plus as an international air gateway — staffed by DHL employees — for clearing and sorting air freight.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“We will still need these operations going forward, but we have not made a final determination on location,” Baker said.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]ABX Air does not operate any international flights for DHL.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]ABX Air employs about 10,000 people worldwide.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]Referring to DHL’s restructuring plans in its U.S. operations, Baker said, “This will not be an overnight action. We will be working methodically to make these changes in a way that does not interrupt ongoing operations. Once a contract is complete with UPS, a limited volume will commence to be transitioned in 2008 with a full ramp-up in 2009. We anticipate the remaining network changes will also be fully implemented by the end of 2009.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]DHL’s business decision is understandable, said Graber, given the loss of $1.3 billion in DHL’s U.S. operations projected for this year along with the losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars in previous years, “but nonetheless it means a lot to our community and is devastating to our community.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“The thought that I heard expressed today was, ‘It’s like when the Air Force base closed, all over again’,” said Graber. In the early 1970s, the U.S. federal government closed the Clinton County Air Force Base, located at the present site of the DHL Air Park.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The loss to ABX Air of DHL’s air transport business will be “tough to recover from” as a company, Graber said.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“We will not be what we have been if this happens the way DHL wants it to. We will be dramatically different. I won’t run away from that; I can’t hide from that. That’s true,” said Graber. “But neither are we going to say, ‘We’re giving up and throwing in the towel and there’s nothing left for us’.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]In addition to providing airlift capacity and sort facility staffing to DHL, ABX Air provides Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance (ACMI) air cargo services to non-DHL customers as well as aircraft maintenance.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]ABX Cargo Services, which is an ABX Air subsidiary, provides hub management services and package handling to the U.S. Postal Service. ABX Material Services, a second subsidiary, provides parts and service for a variety of avionics, hardware, accessories and assemblies.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“I am very, very proud of how our folks are pulling together in spite of this dramatic disruption in their lives,” Graber said.[/FONT]
http://www.wnewsj.com/main.asp?SectionID=49&SubSectionID=156&ArticleID=166512
[FONT=ARIAL BLACK, ARIAL, SANS SERIF]6,000 air park jobs to be lost[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]GARY HUFFENBERGER[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]Staff Writer[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The parent company of DHL said Wednesday it will change to a new partner for its air shipments within North America, a move that’s expected to mean the loss of about 6,000 to 6,100 ABX Air jobs in Wilmington.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The planned deal between DHL and UPS also is expected to have a major impact upon ASTAR Air Cargo. ASTAR and ABX are DHL’s current air carriers for the shipments UPS will transport in the future. ASTAR has hundreds of employees based at the DHL Air Park in Wilmington.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]ABX Air’s night sort operations will be eliminated because the night sort serves, and is served by, the air cargo network whose function will be performed by UPS, said ABX Air President John Graber.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]Graber on Wednesday said it was “a grim day for ABX Air, frankly for the Wilmington community, for the county, for the state.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The ABX president added, “This is going to be really hard on thousands of employees and thousands more family members, and people in the community.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“We tried to talk about this openly, honestly and face-to-face with our employees, and tell them that none of them deserve it. And that it’s a really, really hard thing to go through and we’ll help each other get through it,” Graber said late Wednesday afternoon.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]At a press conference in the Bonn, Germany headquarters of Deutsche Post World Net (DPWN), which is DHL’s parent company, DPWN Chief Executive Officer Frank Appel said the restructuring of DHL’s business in the United States involved a “comprehensive and radical plan.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The U.S. division of DHL has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually. DHL Express CEO John Mullen, at the Bonn press conference, called it DPWN’s “biggest problem by far.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The changes entailed in the restructuring plan, said Mullen, show that DPWN is prepared “to take radical and decisive action” to make U.S. operations viable.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]When the restructuring has been fully implemented, Graber projects ABX Air will have a workforce of about 900 or 1,000 in Wilmington. Presently, in round numbers, ABX Air employs about 7,000 people at the DHL Air Park in Wilmington.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“You can’t overstate how important this is to us. And neither can you say it’s the last nail in the coffin. I don’t think that’s fair,” Graber said.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]Graber said he believes ABX will run the daytime sorting of DHL ground freight indefinitely. “But that’s really the only piece that’s left as we understand their plan,” he added.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“They’ve told us to plan on a day sort for an open-ended period of time,” he continued. DHL officials, Graber said, did not state a number of years or number of months for the day sort operations.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“They just said they don’t have plans to stop that service, and they would anticipate that that would continue to be done here,” Graber said.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]He added, “We have told DHL we want as much of their business as they want to let us have. And we will compete for it and fight to make sure we have as much of a presence in their operation in Wilmington as is possible. My sense of it is that DHL isn’t going to have much of a presence in Wilmington compared to what they have today should the UPS piece go through. So, I don’t know that we’ll have much to fight for.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]There are about 3,100 night-time sorters employed by ABX Air in Wilmington, some of them area farmers who want the health insurance coverage and extra cash provided by their moonlighting.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]During the Bonn press conference, Mullen said Wilmington would not be operating as a domestic air hub for DHL.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]DHL Americas Director of Corporate Communications Jonathan Baker said the DHL Air Park in Wilmington currently serves as DHL’s largest ground hub plus as an international air gateway — staffed by DHL employees — for clearing and sorting air freight.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“We will still need these operations going forward, but we have not made a final determination on location,” Baker said.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]ABX Air does not operate any international flights for DHL.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]ABX Air employs about 10,000 people worldwide.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]Referring to DHL’s restructuring plans in its U.S. operations, Baker said, “This will not be an overnight action. We will be working methodically to make these changes in a way that does not interrupt ongoing operations. Once a contract is complete with UPS, a limited volume will commence to be transitioned in 2008 with a full ramp-up in 2009. We anticipate the remaining network changes will also be fully implemented by the end of 2009.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]DHL’s business decision is understandable, said Graber, given the loss of $1.3 billion in DHL’s U.S. operations projected for this year along with the losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars in previous years, “but nonetheless it means a lot to our community and is devastating to our community.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“The thought that I heard expressed today was, ‘It’s like when the Air Force base closed, all over again’,” said Graber. In the early 1970s, the U.S. federal government closed the Clinton County Air Force Base, located at the present site of the DHL Air Park.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]The loss to ABX Air of DHL’s air transport business will be “tough to recover from” as a company, Graber said.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“We will not be what we have been if this happens the way DHL wants it to. We will be dramatically different. I won’t run away from that; I can’t hide from that. That’s true,” said Graber. “But neither are we going to say, ‘We’re giving up and throwing in the towel and there’s nothing left for us’.”[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]In addition to providing airlift capacity and sort facility staffing to DHL, ABX Air provides Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance (ACMI) air cargo services to non-DHL customers as well as aircraft maintenance.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]ABX Cargo Services, which is an ABX Air subsidiary, provides hub management services and package handling to the U.S. Postal Service. ABX Material Services, a second subsidiary, provides parts and service for a variety of avionics, hardware, accessories and assemblies.[/FONT]
[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]“I am very, very proud of how our folks are pulling together in spite of this dramatic disruption in their lives,” Graber said.[/FONT]
