CREATING DHL INTERNATIONAL by Po Chung and Saimond Ip

“By 1972, I was operations manager for the Topper Toys buying office in Hong Kong. . . . In order to expedite the company’s shipping process, I gradually got to know everyone at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport, including Janning Chan, TransWorld Airlines’ cargo manager. One day, Chan mentioned that he had met an Adrian Dalsey, who had launched a courier service linking Hong Kong with the United States. . . . Dalsey was able to get documents from Hong Kong to New York in a day. . . . At the time, shipping letters of credit overseas was so slow that it threatened my employer’s ability to get the raw materials it needed to keep factories running. . . .

Dalsey offered me a job, to act as DHL’s Hong Kong partner in its courier network. After Dalsey left Hong Kong, I followed up with him on this matter and named one main condition: I didn’t only want Hong Kong; I wanted the entire Far East. A week later, Dalsey called back and agreed. From there, I went on to co-found DHL International, which has since become the largest international courier company in the world.”