How does a package get from A to B from today to tomorrow?
How does it overcome short and long distances?
A look at the Aschheim parcel center to see how it works.
Aschheim
- espresso beans, fashion, delicatessen and more and more bicycles: half a million parcels pass through the DHL sorting center in Aschheim every day. Soon there will be more. A new parcel center is being built right next door (we reported). With its completion in autumn 2022, the capacity will double. "Even if we can work well, the enlargement is urgently needed," confirms Florian Betz. He is the manager of the parcel center with its 400 employees. In the 20 years that Betz has been with us, a lot has happened in the parcel sector.
With internet trading everything has become much bigger and more international.
"Our customers used to sit here in the greater Munich area," says Betz.
"Today we are the point of contact for many customers from abroad for distribution in Germany." The parcel business has even become sensitive to the weather, according to a press release.
If it rains outside, people have more desire and muse to shop on the Internet.
"The next day we have noticeably more parcels," says Betz.
"We want to be a parcel service provider for all customers."
Most of the goods from abroad are delivered directly to the Aschheim parcel center by 40-ton trucks. But the private customer business and regional shipments also play a role for the parcel giant, as Betz explains while walking through his "parcel factory": "We want to be a parcel service provider for all customers." To make this clear, the head of the parcel center in the unloading area picks up two different consignments, a medium-sized cardboard box and a huge package from a roll container.
The smaller box is very likely a private customer parcel sent by relatives. In any case, the sender and recipient have the same surname. The sender is in Unterschleißheim, the recipient address is in Hohenpolding (Erding district). "Around ten to 15 percent of all parcel shipments stay here in our catchment area," explains Betz. He determines the previous stations of the package at his desk. The shipment was posted at 4:09 p.m. in a branch in Unterschleißheim. There the package was scanned for the first time and packed in a roll container. In the branch, several of these containers fill up over the course of the day, and a twelve-ton truck picks them up in the evening on the collection trip and brings them to the parcel center. The truck drives to several branches and major customers on its tour.
Via the conveyor belt through the parcel center
When it arrives at the parcel center, the box is first placed on the belt by hand and scanned.
"This means that the system recognizes our parcel as a consignment from the region for the region," explains Betz.
Now it has to be sorted into the final destination for Hohenpolding with the aim of having its own supply area.
To do this, the parcel travels through the parcel center on its tray on a two-kilometer conveyor belt at a lofty height.
When it arrives at the correct end point, the tray tips the package and the carton slides down a meter-high slide, braked.
“Neatly packaged goods survive the slide without any problems,” says Betz.
When it arrived at the final destination in the parcel center late in the evening, the parcel destined for Hohenpolding now has a break of several hours.
In the early morning it is packed again in a roll container and leaves the parcel center around five o'clock on a truck that takes it directly to the delivery base on its tour.
There the deliverer sorts the parcel into his tour - and if nothing comes up, the parcel will be with the recipient by the afternoon at the latest.
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Special distribution group: This is where bulky goods such as Austrian bicycles that are too big for the conveyor belts end up.
© DHL
The second package that Florian Betz chose is a bicycle from an Austrian manufacturer. The shipping address is a logistics center in the Munich area, the recipient has ordered his bike to Norderstedt near Hamburg. “The business with bicycles and especially with e-bikes has been booming since Corona,” says Florian Betz. “That's why we're happy that we can also process bulky goods in the parcel centers.” The box is too big for the conveyor belt, however, and the maximum length even on a “double tray” is 1.20 meters. For this reason, the box with the bicycle is packed in a roll container in incoming processing and brought to a special manual distribution circuit in the middle of the parcel center together with other bulky goods. There, employees sort the large parcels by hand for local and long-term destinations.The roll container in the direction of Hamburg fills up quickly, the last gap next to the box with the bike is closed by a stately pomegranate tree. "There is nothing," says Betz, "that cannot and is not ordered online."
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It is necessary to tackle the bulky goods: the employees load the bulky goods into roll containers, which in turn end up in "swap bodies".
© DHL
So that the employees in the distribution circle have enough freedom of movement for the heavy work, full containers are removed quickly. An employee also grabs the roll container with the wheel for Norderstedt and the pomegranate tree for Hamburg and pushes it to the roll-up door for shipments to Hamburg. The packages that the conveyor belt throws down the chute land right next to it. The employees on the day shift load these into a so-called swap body for onward transport until 9 p.m., and the roll containers with the bulky goods are pushed onto the loading area. The swap bodies are seven meter long container boxes on stilts. As soon as the boxes are filled, a driver picks them up on a carriage, i.e. a mobile undercarriage, and transports them away.However, the truck does not drive through to Hamburg on the autobahn, but only a few kilometers further to the Riem freight yard, where a crane lifts the swap bodies onto the “Parcel InterCity”. The train easily catches up the time lost in reloading. "We emit significantly fewer greenhouse gases when transporting by rail," explains Florian Betz. "So we keep our performance promise and do something good for the environment."
The next day the train will reach Hamburg at around half past four in the morning, and with it the bike.
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