Around the World... in How Many Days?

When President Polk wanted to send a letter to the Far West in 1845, it took six months for his message to reach its final destination. This was accomplished by either traveling around the bottom tip of South America or crossing the Panama Isthmus. A little over 80 years later, the world would become captivated by Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic. In just 33.5 hours he flew from Long Island, N.Y. to Paris, France. While today, 33 hours sounds like an obscene amount of time for a trip that now takes just a little over seven — it was the quintessential giant leap for air freighters.

Fast forward another 80 years and today there are scads of cargo carriers delivering packages, letters and almost anything a consumer could ever desire all over the globe. But just how far can the carriers reach? How long will it take to get there? And how much will it cost? These are all questions Dr. John J. Bartholdi, III, research director for the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech and his students set out to discover.

Through an “informal” annual study, Bartholdi’s group of about 60 students sent packages through UPS, DHL and FedEx to five remote locations around the world. The 2007 race began on April 13, when the boxes were sent out to: Apia, the only city on Upulu in the Western Pacific Ocean; Florianopolis, an island off the coast of southern Brazil; Harare the capitol of Zimbabwe; Tikrit, the birth place of Saddam Hussein; and Yangon, in what is formerly known as Burma. According to Bartholdi, the destinations are purposely extreme and are selected to provide an added challenge to the carriers.

“In the past, we have specifically looked for unusual or hard-to-reach destinations, ones that will provide some challenges in transport and visibility,” Bartholdi explains. “Differences in the abilities of the carriers to move packages between N.Y. and L.A. are measured in hours; at the edges of their networks, the differences are measured in days or even weeks and we can more easily see weaknesses in the networks. That said, many of the destinations have been suggested by students. Georgia Tech is a wonderfully diverse university, drawing students from all over the world. I personally do not know anyone in Ouagadougou, but there is a pretty good chance one of my students does.”