Requests are classified in two categories

Fast! When a client, strangled by financial issues or human, puts pressure in requesting a delivery "as soon as possible", "we must keep reason, measurement issues and offer several alternatives and budgets taking into account all constraints", temper Nathalie Pourzand, Director of the "special services" of TNT Express France. "Because the express, the urgent and the extremely urgent, we surf on the semantic nuances", she explains.

"Each client has its view of the urgency and the exception." A we evaluated and to face means suited", confirms Tiphaine Elise, extreme product manager emergency in DHL Express France that"except on TV wear packages, there is a clear incompressible delays not only considering the duration of a flight, but all steps as customs clearance."

In fact, the importation of tiny and short-lived Amazon medicinal plants is sometimes more complicated that the chartering of a battery of semi trailers to move to the Germany of the blocks weighing hundreds of tons. Sometimes, an accompanying "on board mail" (OBC) must be ready to leave in time to take the other end of the world, a simple piece of paper, as the answer to a call for tenders.

Pressed customer is eclectic: products medical, sometimes infectious, or even dangerous machine parts agricultural and wine-growing in the period of harvest and harvest, folds highly secure and confidential (passports, checkbooks, subjects of reviews), or even secret defence, launches of products which should arrive neither too early nor too late, spare parts for the high-tech repairs or "med techs" (medical equipment). It sometimes chartering a helicopter landing in the plant Court to file the small cogwheel which stops the work of hundreds of workers.

Requests are classified in two categories. First extreme point or unexpected urgency: the response to a call for tenders, a sample, a prototype, clothes for a parade of fashion, the shoes of a football star before a qualification game, equipment to join a Minister on a diplomatic trip, masks or Tamiflu because of flu-related psychosis.

"Supply chain".

Nothing seems priori too much when the stakes appear high. The transport of simple customs documentation in a weekend of ramadan Iranian port is encrypted in thousands of euros because a cargo containing millions of euros of goods was blocked. But, increasingly, the extreme urgency is planned, regular, integrated in a "supply chain", as the spare parts for the repair of elevators, computer servers, banking machines. This is the recurrent unpredictable, but anticipated and organized.

To treat these different markets, as of extreme urgency, integrated in international groups, are first organizing solutions: "We coordinate internal benefits or a portfolio of 600 subcontractors," said Nathalie Pouzaud. "An important part of our business is subcontracted to specialists, transportation of values, of dangerous goods, according to the destinations", confirms Tiphaine Elise. Chronopost, which resold Taxicolis, to created a delivery "express ": "packages removed up to 20 hours 30 delivered sometimes in the morning before 8 hours in some cities", says Yvonne Courtois, Director of the market. But, for Chronopost, deliveries in H 3 H 4 "assume an organization quite apart". Group subcontracts them to Taxicolis, its former subsidiary, but reflects to recreate this benefit internally.

Double digit growth

The international giants of the express, rely on a multitude of couriers or small, national, regional or local dealing with the emergency. Flash Europe - which took over the Taxicolis - Novea has any speed, Top Chrono, Colitel or Warning combine the means of their own employees to those of small individual sub-contractors couriers or "louageurs". On the other hand, Cetup, based near Grenoble, 100 "pilot" with light trucks, in the France and the neighbouring countries for "sewn-main meeting point issues companies", said its leader, Jean-Pierre Caposselle.

This microcosm of the urgent is doing rather well: "express cargo suffers from the Cree, e as companies seek cheaper and less tight time frames by turning to the traffic Messaging." "But the extreme urgency does not know the crisis and enjoys a double-digit growth," says Tiphaine Elise, DHL Express.

A trend that confirms Nathalie Pourzand, TNT Express, and Yvonne Courtois, in Chronopost: "because this market responds to niche markets." "Whatever the conditions, time issues remain and need more repair because the materials are less easily renewed."