On Friday, April 13th, Professor Bartholdi's class contacted UPS, FedEx, and DHL to carry identical packages to contacts in:

1. Yangon: until recently, capital of Myanmar; formerly known as Rangoon, Burma
2. Tikrit: administrative center of the province of Salah ad Din, Iraq
3. Harare: the capital of Zimbabwe
4. Florianopolis: an island off the coast of southern Brazil
5. Apia, Samoa: in the western pacific

Sites are chosen based on locations that challenge the business processes of the multinational package carriers. It is remarkable that most packages eventually reach their destinations, even under difficult circumstances, but there have been some dramatic lapses. One package was carried back-and-forth across the Atlantic Ocean nine times before delivery. Another was sent to Costa Rica instead of Croatia. One carrier claimed that the destination country did not exist. (It does.)

There have been dramatic finishes as well. In 2006, UPS beat DHL to Croatia by 3 minutes. One race ended in a tie when delivery folk from competing companies arrived at the door simultaneously, even though the packages had taken completely different routes to the destination. Technically FedEx made the delivery first, but we gave extra credit to the UPS person for courtesy in holding the door.

Follow the 2007 Package Race here.