As of: March 28, 2024, 8:01 a.m
By: Nicole Kalenda
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First it is sorted and scanned, then packed and delivered: Stefan Grubisic, Gräfelfinger site manager for a month, and Annemarie Sonner, one of six team leaders at the base. © Michael Schönwälder
Two-story and with plenty of garage space: the Gräfelfing delivery base of Deutsche Post and DHL occupies an exceptional position. 12,000 parcels and over 300,000 letters are delivered from here week after week.
Gräfelfing
- The initial difficulties have been overcome, the backlog from last December has long been processed: For almost six months, the Gräfelfing delivery base of Deutsche Post and DHL has been delivering 12,000 parcels and 320,000 to 350,000 letters a week. 91 employees ensure that mail gets to Gräfelfing, Planegg, Krailling and the Munich districts of Hadern, Laim, Pasing and Obermenzing. Stefan Grubisic has been managing the base in the Lochham industrial area for a good month. His supervisor is Heike Schubert. From her Gräfelfingen office, she is responsible for ten delivery points.
Gräfelfing is something special. “We are happy that we found this property,” says Norbert Blumenstein, head of the letter delivery and network department at the Munich operations branch. He looks after a total of 85 delivery points with 3,500 employees, from downtown Munich to the Alps. He calls Gräfelfing “the largest garage in my area of responsibility”. The rule is that vehicles park outside. Not so at the address Am Kirchenhölzl 12. A large part of the ground floor is reserved for the “StreetScooters”, which are used for combined delivery, i.e. letters and parcels are delivered.
23 charging stations for small vans in the hall
Developed by delivery people for delivery people in collaboration with the University of Aachen, the fully electric small vans have higher loading areas than normal delivery vans and a rail mounted on the folded down passenger seat for the letter containers. There are 23 charging stations in the hall, plus ten in the parking lot in front. There are currently 23 tours with “StreetScooters”. “Everything is completely emission-free,” says Blumenstein. That was the community's requirement. The “StreetScooters” are joined by 38 e-bikes, 34 of which are e-trikes. The tricycles have the advantage that they can load up to eight letter containers, even with small packages.
Delivery is allowed from 6 a.m. By 9 a.m., eight trucks and two sprinters arrive from the Starnberg and Munich mail centers as well as the Aschheim and Augsburg parcel centers with the roughly pre-sorted mail. “The fine-tuning takes place in Gräfelfing,” says Blumenstein.
And on two floors, which is unusual. As a rule, delivery bases are at ground level, but in Gräfelfing the property does not allow this. Where there was once a printing shop, parcel distribution is now located on the ground floor next to the area for the fleet. Two office employees help unload the trucks and bring in the parcel roll containers. There are three distribution circles, 636 and 637 for Gräfelfing to Krailling, 415 for the Munich districts. “October to December is the busiest,” says Schubert. It usually starts with Black Friday and returns arrive in January. What is delivered has already been scanned in the parcel center, is registered again here, by the delivery person and finally during delivery.
Letters on the first floor
The first floor is reserved for letters. You have to be brought here by elevator. Letter deliverers, i.e. those who travel by bicycle, start at 6.45 a.m., the joint deliverers with the “StreetScooters” at 7.30 a.m. The 91 employees belong to 24 nations and speak 19 different languages. “We greet people in many languages,” says Schubert. “Dobro jutro” means “good morning” in Bosnian. The performance dialogue, the short speech before the delivery people set off on their tours, takes place in three languages: German, Albanian and Bosnian. The topics are diverse, such as how to properly load a roll container with packages. It is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Everything must be prepared by then. The letters are pre-sorted by machine, the yellow boxes they come in already have the tour numbers on them, “but there are shipments that cannot be recorded. They are sorted by hand,” says Blumenstein.
One side is reserved for network deliverers, the other for letter deliverers. On the preparation wall, they sort the mail into compartments by street and house number from top left to bottom right. Each street has its own color. At the end, they pack the mail into the letter containers from bottom right to top left so that they can then process it. On the way, they get supplies from depots staffed by delivery drivers. The packing stations are also supplied from Gräfelfing.
The “StreetScooters” do not recharge. They deliver around 120 parcels and 2,000 letters every day. At the check-out counter in the morning, delivery drivers receive multilingual scanners, printers and car keys. They usually do the same tour. Special features such as an aggressive dog or a mailbox that is difficult to see are noted for the representative. From April 9th, five more network tours with “StreetScooter” will be added. This is due to the declining mail business. Easter greetings, for example, says Schubert, are no longer noticeable.