ACS Time Critical’s five most interesting onboard courier jobs

1. Urgent cancer treatment to link up with a cruise ship
“A cancer sufferer was having trouble with the medication he had with him, whilst he was on a Caribbean cruise and needed replacement tablets urgently. It was decided the ship’s stopover in Cuba was the best place to hand the medication over, so we then faced a race against time, as the ship was on its own schedule. As US citizens weren’t allowed to travel to Cuba at that time, we had to locate a courier in the US able to do the job. He drove the pills almost 200 miles, from Portland in Oregon to Seattle, to catch a midnight flight to Miami. The flight to Havana departed first thing in the morning and our courier met up with the cruise ship to hand the essential pills over.”

2. Around the world in one job
“Several years ago we were part way through a job, when we were asked to continue across the international date line, resulting in travelling more than halfway around the world! We were contacted to get some semi-conductors from Portugal to Brazil as quickly as possible. We arranged everything within half an hour and dispatched our courier to Lisbon. When he arrived in Brazil, the customer realised that some of the parts they had, were also needed in China! Our courier flew via Honolulu to Hong Kong, where he handed the shipment over to another one of our couriers, who had a Chinese visa, who took it on its final leg.”

3. Handmade shoes to Indonesia for daughter’s wedding
“A gentleman had accidentally left his handmade shoes in his hotel room in New York. He realised, whilst still at the airport, and so called the hotel’s concierge to see if he could get them to the airport before his plane departed – unfortunately there was not enough time. He needed them for his daughter’s wedding in Indonesia a couple of days later, so the concierge called us after he found out that it would have taken six days via their usual courier company. We arranged for our courier to get to the hotel in New York, pick the shoes up and get on a flight to Jakarta, via Dubai. Once there, he drove for more than three hours to hand deliver the shoes to a very grateful client.”

4. A cool and quick delivery
“A few years ago we had an urgent request from one of our ACS colleagues who was accompanying a team running a marathon in the Arctic Circle. They were in Svalbard, 500 miles north of the tip of Norway, and needed a new motor for their outdoor heater. The part was in Denmark, so our courier drove there from his base in Hamburg, picked up the shipment and flew into Svalbard Airport, where he handed it over to the ACS colleague. From call to delivery was within 18 hours.”

5. There will be blood
“Probably the most interesting though was the recent courier who had to take blood plasma directly following an operation at a hospital in Manchester to San Francisco in the least amount of time possible. After the operation overran, the only solution at that stage was a private jet charter to deliver the shipment in time. As part of the larger Air Charter Service group, we were able to contact the San Francisco office’s private jet division, who quickly sourced a Bombardier Global Express, which arrived in Manchester waiting the completion of the procedure. The plasma was delivered just 13 hours after it left the Manchester hospital.”

Weigelt concluded: “This is just a small selection of what I think are interesting or complex, but we arrange dozens of onboard couriers every week, so there will have been plenty of other examples – no two jobs are the same.”