Logistics Emergency Teams (LET)

With the backing of the World Economic Forum, TNT has joined forces with Agility and UPS to help the humanitarian sector with emergency response logistics to large-scale natural disasters. The companies are pooling logistics expertise, human resources, and in-kind services to be made available to the humanitarian community when disaster strikes.

The support of Logistics Emergency Teams (LETs) includes providing logistics specialists (e.g. airport coordination, airport managers and warehouse managers), logistics assets (e.g. warehouses, trucks, forklifts) and transportation services. LETs will intervene for the first three to six weeks following a natural disaster such as an earthquake, flood, or storm.

The LETs programme presents an incredible opportunity to bring the full weight of the logistics industry to bear at a time when lives are in the balance. -Dan Brutto, President, UPS International.

The companies stand ready to deploy Logistics Emergency Teams worldwide upon request from the United Nations Global Logistics Cluster. The nature of the request, local situations and the companies' available resources will dictate the teams' size and composition. As a general rule, they will serve in countries where member companies already operate, thereby leveraging their knowledge of local constraints. A committee representing the member companies is to answer requests from the Global Logistics Cluster led by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and decide on the deployment of LETs.

The quality of the partnership was first demonstrated on the ground in August 2007 when Agility, TNT and UPS set up Logistics Emergency Teams in Indonesia during an operational exercise with the World Food Programme.

Global presence brings social responsibilities. As we grow as companies and as an industry, particularly in emerging markets, we can see for ourselves that the scourge of poverty, disease and disasters affects us all. No one can afford to ignore these problems - and in fact, working together, we are in a unique position to help. - Tarek Sultan, Chairman and Managing Director of Agility.