DHL Express (originally standing for Dalsey, Hillblom and Lynn), is a division of Deutsche Post World Net providing international express mail services.

History

DHL was founded as a company in 1969 by Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn. The trio initially provided a courier service between the Continental United States and Hawaii, then expanded the business from there. In 1998, Deutsche Post began to acquire shares in DHL, finally reached majority ownership in 2001, and completed the purchase in 2002. Deutsche Post then effectively absorbed DHL into its Express division while expanding the use of the DHL brand to other Deutsche Post divisions, business units and subsidiaries. Today, the DHL Express shares its well-known DHL brand with other Deutsche Post business units such as DHL Global Forwarding & Freight and DHL Supply Chain.

• 2001: Deutsche Post acquired a majority (51%) of DHL's shares, and the remaining 49% in 2002. The new DHL was launched by merging the old DHL, Danzas and Securicor Omega Euro Express.
• 2001: The Packstation, an automated delivery booth, is introduced as a pilot project in Dortmund and Mainz.
• 2002: Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger jet, collided with DHL Flight 611, a Boeing 757-200 cargo jet, at over Überlingen, Germany, due to a miscommunication between the pilots of Flight 2937 and Swiss air traffic control. The 69 people aboard the Tupolev (consisting mainly of Russian schoolchildren) and the two pilots of the Boeing were killed.
• August 2003: Deutsche Post acquires Airborne Express, and begins to integrate it into DHL. The Airborne Express Airline named ABX Air is to provide contract ACMI service until 2011.
• 22 November 2003: DHL shootdown incident in Baghdad: Iraqi insurgents fired an SA-7 "Grail" surface-to-air missile at a European Air Transport Airbus A300 operating on behalf of DHL. The aircraft had taken off from Baghdad airport. The missile struck the left wing, disabling all three hydraulic systems and setting the wing on fire. The aircraft began a dangerous phugoid (vertical oscillation) but the crew managed to land safely at the airport despite only being able to control the aircraft by adjusting the engine thrust. No other crew had ever been able to achieve a landing in this fashion, though the crew of United Airlines Flight 232 was able to also navigate their DC-10-10 after a similar triple hydraulic failure that resulted in a crash landing at Sioux Gateway Airport.
• September 2004: a planned expansion by DHL at Brussels International Airport created a political crisis in Belgium.
• 21 October 2004: DHL Express announced that it would move its European hub from Brussels to Leipzig, Germany (Vatry, France was considered and rejected). DHL's unions call a strike in response, paralyzing work for a day.
• 8 November 2004: DHL Express invests €120 million in Indian domestic courier Blue Dart and becomes the majority shareholder in the company.
• September 2005: Deutsche Post made an offer to buy contract logistics company Exel plc, which had just acquired Tibbett & Britten Group.
• On December 14, 2005, Deutsche Post announced the completion of the acquisition of Exel plc. When integrating Exel into its Logistics division, it added its well-known DHL brand acquired with the purchase of DHL Express to form the name DHL Exel Supply Chain. Following the latest deal, DHL have a global workforce of 285,000 people (500,000 people including DPWN and other sister companies) and roughly $65 billion in annual sales.
• September 2006: DHL wins ten year contract worth £1.6 billion, to run the NHS Supply Chain (part of the UK's National Health Service). DHL will be responsible for providing logistics services for over 500,000 products to support 600 hospitals and other health providers in England. As part of this new contract, in 2008 DHL will open a new distribution centre to act as a stock holding hub for food and other products, with another distribution centre opening in 2012. The two new distribution centres will create around 1,000 new jobs.
• September 2007: DHL Express co-founds new cargo airline AeroLogic, based at Leipzig/Halle Airport, in a 50:50 joint venture with Lufthansa Cargo. The carrier will operate up to 11 Boeing 777Fs by 2012.
• December 2007: DHL becomes the first ever carrier to transport cargo via wind powered ships flying MS Beluga Skysails kites.
• May 2008: DHL Aviation moved their central depot to Leipzig; Germany, resulting in a significant positioning for improved service and timeliness to the European Union.
• 28 May 2008: DHL Express announced the restructuring plans for its United States network, including terminating its business relationship with ABX Air and entering into a contract with competitor UPS for air freight operations. Its cargo hub would shift from Wilmington to Louisville. The Air Line Pilots Association Int'l (ALPA), strongly protests. {See also Wilmington, Ohio}
• October 2008: Two DHL Express Middle East senior executives, David Giles and Jason Bresler, were assassinated in Kabul, by one of their own Afghan employees; they received military honors by the U.S. military, the first of such kind in Afghanistan.
• 10 November 2008: DHL announces that it is cutting 9,500 jobs as it discontinues domestic air and ground operations within the United States to deal with economic uncertainty. It is retaining international services, and is still in talks with UPS to resume domestic shipping services.
• 30 January 2009 DHL ends domestic pick up and delivery service in the United States, effectively leaving UPS and FedEx as the two major express parcel delivery companies in the United States