Our Races

  • Photo of students in front of Gootberg Primary School
    Great Package Race 2017
    February 27, 2017
    And they are off...! This year we are sending books for school children in Namibia. The occasion was provided by Glynda Ratliff, who traveled last year in Namibia with Jason Nott of Ultimate Safaris. She writes “The Conservation Travel Foundation, through its support from Ultimate Safaris and the guests that travel with them, has a…
  • Great Package Race 2013
    December 13, 2013
    And they are off...! This is the Holiday Edition of the Great Package Race and like many holidays it will be a stress test: We are sending our packages during the busiest few days of the year for package delivery. Our recipient is... Santa Claus, himself! In November we received confirmation by email from “Cristina…
  • We sent books and personal supplies to VSO volunteers in Mongolia.
    Great Package Race 2009
    October 5, 2009
    And they are off...! This is the Recession Edition of the Great Package Race: Only two destinations, but interesting ones. And after years of choosing ever more distant destinations, this time we chose one close to home. On Monday 05 October we sent packages to Opp, Alabama and Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Opp, Alabama, USA, a…
  • Students prepared 4 identical boxes to be sent to each destination.
    Great Package Race 2008
    April 1, 2008
    And they are off...! The theme this time is “Hard-To-Reach Places”. On 01 April we sent packages to: Pitcairn Island, where the mutineers from HMS Bounty fled in 1789 Khartoum, Sudan, where the White Nile, flowing north from Uganda, meets the Blue Nile, flowing west from Ethiopia Almaty, Kazakhstan, ancestral home of the apple Uluru…
  • Figure 1: Routes to Tikrit
    Great Package Race 2007
    April 13, 2007
    And they are off...! We sent packages to: Apia, the only city on Upulu, one of the islands comprising the country of Samoa, in the western Pacific Ocean. Upulu has no street addresses. Florianopolis, an island off the coast of southern Brazil just above Uruguay; considered by the carriers to be a “remote area” Harare,…
  • Figure 1: UPS routes to our destinations
    Great Package Race 2006
    April 14, 2006
    And they are off...! We sent packages to: Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso in west Africa (formerly Upper Volta) Split, home of the Palace of Diocletian and the largest city in the Dalmatian region of Croatia Surabaya, capital of East Java, Indonesia Punta Arenas, capital of the Patagonian region of Chile and one of…
  • Fedex pickup: 05 April 1345h
    Great Package Race 2004
    April 5, 2004
    And they are off...! We sent packages to: Lome, Togo (off the west coast of Africa) Haifa, Israel Bangalore, India The start We phoned each of the carriers at 1100h on 05 April and asked them to come pick up packages: Fedex pickup: 05 April 1345h DHL pickup: 05 April 1540h UPS pickup: 05 April…
  • Figure 1: The UPS path from Atlanta to Singapore.
    Great Package Race 2003
    January 15, 2003
    And they are off…! We sent two packages sent from The Logistics Institute, Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA (USA) to The Logistics Institute Asia-Pacific in Singapore. To make this more interesting we staged a race: One package, weighing 3.25 lbs, would be sent via FedEx; the other, weighing 4.5 lbs, would be shipped via UPS.…

Our Next Race…

We welcome suggestions for subsequent competitions, where we will be sending a set of GT baseball caps, t-shirts, etc. somewhere in the world.

Send us an address with accompanying telephone number and email address, and we will race the items by vying package couriers to your parents, nephews, nieces, etc. All that we need is sufficient address and contact information and a promise to document the delivery.

Check out the companion event, The Great Container Race, in which we sent 40-foot shipping containers full of medical supplies by alternate routes and carriers to a hospital in Ghana.