DHL starts China-Vietnam truck service
DHL Global Forwarding said Thursday it has started a China-Vietnam cross-border full truckload trucking service aimed at shippers who want costs lower than airfreight but speed faster than ocean freight.
DHL tested the network in July with mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson, trucking a shipment from Nanjing, China, via Pingxiang in Guangxi province, to Ericsson's warehouse in Hanoi. The 2,500-kilometer route took five days.
The cross-border service connects major Chinese origins, such as Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing, Suzhou, Shanghai, Wuhan, Fuzhou, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhongshan and Dongguan, with Vietnam destinations including Hanoi, Haiphong, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City. The FTL service is door-to-door for bonded and non-bonded cargo, and uses GPS-equipped trucks to ensure security and provide daily track and trace, the logistics company said.
DHL said transit times can be shaved by up to 10 days, while it's 60 percent cheaper than airfreight.
'Take the door-to-door service from Shanghai to Hanoi for instance,' DHL said. 'Usually it takes four days by airfreight or 17 days by ocean freight. If using road transportation, the transit time is six to seven days, and the cost saving is up to 60-70 percent of the airfreight cost.'
DHL rival TNT has developed an extensive intra-Asia road network with similar service characteristics.
Meanwhile, DHL has added new service points to its expanding less-than-container load ocean freight network from Asia.
The company now offers weekly LCL services between Jakarta’s Tanjung Priok port (Indonesia's biggest container port) to Los Angeles and Hamburg. The service will be handled by DHL's in-house carrier Danmar Lines and follows a string of other LCL service announcements throughout this year.
The United States is Indonesia's second largest export market, after Japan, with exports totaling $3.9 billion in the first five months of 2009, DHL said.