(Fulda, 10 March 2023) This year, the company VTL Vernetzte-Transport-Logistik GmbH is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The company VTL was founded in March 1998 with the objective of establishing a general cargo cooperation addressed to small and medium-sized forwarding companies in order to meet the requirements of a nationwide transport network throughout Germany at an ideal truck utilization. After the merger of 2005 with the company Spedition 2000, VTL has developed into one of the leading quality groupage cooperations with 127 partners and is also ideally positioned for the future.
At the beginning, VTL started with 45 partners and 12 gates at its business site located in Herleshausen. The special feature during the first handling night in 1998 was that all 45 partners appeared in the HUB as agreed by handshake to give the start signal for VTL. Starting from that moment, it was already clear that VTL not only has strong cohesion and high reliability, but that all the involved parties were committed to a fair, open and cooperative togetherness – a conditions which has not changed to this day. These common values characterize the image of the VTL CargoFamily, which also convinces with its clear structures while at the same time it provides a high level of flexibility for small and medium-sized companies and an excellent quality.
Since 2000, the 37,000 m² company site of the VTL system headquarters has been located in the centre of Germany, in the city of Fulda. Due to the increasing volumes, the transhipment area of the central transhipment plant has been gradually expanded during the recent years so that today, in addition to the office building, it comprises a transhipment hall of almost 10,000 m² with 115 gates. In the central HUB, 125 employees are currently responsible for the smooth handling of the merchandise. Two other regional transhipment companies are operated by VTL partners in the areas of Hanover and Gelsenkirchen.
During the initial phase of VTL, there were only intra-German connections in the network. Starting from 2004, the first European-wide traffic was implemented. Today, VTL is well connected in more than 39 countries.
A milestone for VTL was the merger with Spedition 2000 in 2005, which combined two smaller networks into a competitive cooperation. In doing so, the company exploited many synergies and numerous growth potentials. Only four years after the merger, the general cargo cooperation cracked the 1 million shipment mark. In the course of the following year, the volume of shipments almost doubled in comparison with the year 2006. In 2022, the volume of shipments within the network amounted to 1.36 million shipments.
From the beginning, the company worked with a powerful Internet portal putting it into the position of guaranteeing a quick and reliable transmission of the shipment data. In 2012, the digitalization was further promoted and the cooperation software “myVTL” was implemented as a further milestone in the history of VTL. The ERP system, which is tailored to the requirements of partners and customers, offers an intuitive and convenient platform equipped with tailor-made interfaces and enables a smooth and automated data exchange. In the future, VTL will continue to rely on the further development of the myVTL software. At the same time, it will also focus on customer-oriented solutions, such as the completely automated freight cost calculator, the practical ETA calculations to determine meaningful arrival times for the delivery.
“All together we look back with pride on the past 25 years by looking forward to the future. Our main focus is on the topics of digitization and innovation, as well as on the further development of our existing processes. In doing so, we will be well prepared for the future, because stagnation means a step backwards for us which means that I would not be an option”, so VTL Managing Director Johanna Broese.