Averitt Express expanded the origin points in its Asia-Memphis Express less-than-container load service to Hong Kong and South China. Averitt rolled out the service last July, with the service originating in Shanghai and Shenzen. Containers are loaded in Asia and booked directly to Memphis, Tenn., via the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Shipments are deconsolidated at Memphis and funneled into Averitt's LTL network and moved directly to customers.

The Deutsche Post announcement on the scaling back of the company’s DL and DHL Express operations in the USA will leave FedEx, UPS and the US Postal Service picking up the slack, and also will affect the proposed DHL-UPS tie-up, according to UPS. The proposed deal with UPS is still being negotiated, but the deal has been scaled back. "Today's announcement by DHL (means) the only thing that's left is moving international packages once they get to the US border. That's a dramatically lower amount of volume than what they were originally talking to us about," UPS spokesman Norman Black said.

The third quarter results for DPWN (DHL) shows interesting details of strategic change and cash inflow. The strategic change is the write down billions of dollars for the closure of much of its US express business, but it is also receiving cash inflow from the sale of PostBank and recompense for a previous anti-competition fine from the EU (European Union). For the quarter, revenue was up 4.1% year-on-year, whilst EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) was 105% ahead on a similar basis. However, the latter figure was hugely affected by exceptional items, with 'underlying' EBIT down by 8.5% on Q3 2007. One of the big issues underlying that performance was the write-offs caused by DPWN's DHL division pulling out of the US domestic express business. That development will increase one-offs costs by €1.5bn, making the total costs €3bn. However, the bulk of those costs have yet to show up in the accounts, with DPWN stating that most will be reflected in the numbers at the end of this year and the beginning of the next. Frank Appel warned the company would experience a fall in profit before 'one off items' from the previous estimate of €2.9bn to €2.4bn in 2008. After those 'one-off' write-offs, the company predicts it will fall into loss for 2008.