LYNX Express
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- For the New Zealand train, see Lynx Express.
LYNX Express is a courier (parcel delivery) company operating principally in the United Kingdom. It was acquired in September 2005 by UPS.
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[edit] History
LYNX Express history dates back to the privatisation of the British Railways, post World War II. Each of the pre-nationalisation companies had formed a local delivery network, based on lorries and vans, to extend the railway to the customers door, thus enabling parcels and light freight to be delivered in the control of the railway company.
After nationalisation, and following various guises in between, these services were amalgamated to form a division of British Rail Services, known in its shortened version of BRS Parcels. Together with the UK government-owned national road transporter National Carriers, the company was privatised as BRS Road Services as part of National Freight Carriers and its sister company Roadline, in the late 1980s under policy of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government.
After privatisation, BRS purchased British Rail's remaining local delivery asset, Red Star Parcels. The resulting company, now encompassing three different road transport organisations, was renamed LYNX Express. Following the launch of LYNX, it eventually achieved that goal in the late 1990s, still under its privatised NFC parent. However, it was promptly sold off, achieving its current status. The acquisition of Red Star followed soon afterwards.
[edit] 1990s through 2005
Lynx Express is a smaller operator in the UK parcel delivery market place. Its infrastructure has been underfunded for many years and as such, cannot offer as great of competition, either on price or service standards, as its competitors.[citation needed]
In the late 90s, early 00s, when they reached the capacity of their sortation systems at their network hubs and their driver network was at the limits of its abilities to deliver the traffic, LYNX upped its prices in order to lose accounts with less desirable traffic. Unfortunately, its delivery performance across the network was so poor, customers left and prices rose.[citation needed]
The average LYNX driver on a rural run will cover an area of 450-550 square miles.
[edit] Purchase by UPS
In September 2005, LYNX was acquired by Atlanta, Georgia based UPS for £55.5 million (US$97.1 million). At the time, LYNX was one of the UK's largest independent parcel carriers, majority owned by private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital. It had sales of $295 million (£170 million) for the fiscal year ended 2 October 2004 [1]
[edit] External links
- UPS press release on purchase
- LYNX Express. Official site.
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