PLANTATION, Fla. DHL says it has announced significant progress on its Route Optimization Initiative, a component of a program announced earlier this year to enhance courier pick up and delivery efficiency.

To date, DHL has improved pickup service for customers in hundreds of cities across the United States, while decreasing vehicle usage and fuel consumption.

At facilities across the U.S., the DHL Route Optimization Initiative uses a customized software solution to pull pickup and delivery data from courier data terminal scanners. The information is uploaded for analysis and route mapping, enabling DHL to increase efficiency and effectively balance its workload capacity across its entire US fleet.

Since its inception, the route optimization program has decreased required drive times, limited route length and fuel consumption, and enabled more rapid processing of shipments. As a result of the initiative, customers throughout the country have more predictable regular delivery times. In addition, DHL has been able to extend the deadline for pick up service by up to 90 minutes in over 400 metropolitan areas across the U.S., encompassing over one half million businesses.

DHL will expand the Route Optimization Initiative in 2007 with still more precise shipment forecasting tools to ensure all courier routes are constructed to account for fluctuating volume by customer, seasonality, and historical data.