Holiday shipping, the outlook for trade and the economy

Like its U.S. rivals, DHL Express is entering its busiest time of year, delivering Christmas parcels to consumers in dozens of countries around the world.

That means hiring more staff and making sure the network can handle the seasonal surge in volume.

Though not as familiar to American consumers, DHL’s parent company, Deutsche Post AG, has more employees than either FedEx or UPS.

Frank Appel, 57, runs the Bonn, Germany-based giant. Appel studied chemistry and neurobiology and was a consultant for McKinsey & Co. before joining Deutsche Post in 2000. He was named CEO in 2008.

Appel recently spoke to The Associated Press about the outlook for its peak season and the importance of automation.

Christmas is right around the corner. What kind of shipping volumes do you expect?

We expect a very strong Christmas period this year because worldwide we have very good growth, we have decreasing unemployment around the world.

Do you have a percentage increase over last year in mind?

It will be definitely more than 10 percent, in the U.S. as well.

Are you confident you can handle the increase?

We are very confident. It’s a similar challenge if natural disasters are happening, which are completely unpredictable. We believe we are always the first who are back to work and have our operations normal. That’s somehow part of the DNA the whole organization has now for many, many years. And that shows as well at Christmas: what are the unpredictable forces? It’s traffic, it’s snow, and in some parts of the world it’s ice on the street, and then you have to find ways how you deal with that.

How many seasonal workers are you hiring this year?

In Germany we are hiring about 10,000. In the U.S., where we are of course significantly smaller, about 3,500.

DHL benefits from a strong global economy. What is your economic outlook for 2019?

We have definitely seen a very good year this year, and our assumption is that it will go back to the levels that we have seen before, so something between 3 and 3½ percent growth. The reason is uncertainty in the market due to political questions. One is imminent with Brexit, then what the relationship between China and the U.S. is with regard to trade. That is currently still more psychology impact than real impact, but psychology is very important for business.

Are tariffs reducing international shipments?

We haven’t seen in our numbers any major slowdown, but some of the duties between the U.S. and China become only effective Jan. 1. It’s still only a part of the global flow ... there are many other strong trade lanes. We are not particularly nervous, we are concerned because global trade is a win-win and not a lose-win situation.