DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight specialist, recently delivered a 100 ton MRI scanner from the U.K. to the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research at the University of Minnesota. It's the world's largest MRI scanner and it's estimated to be worth 10 to 20 million dollars.

It took the DHL team two years to plan the transfer process and everything, including route surveys, had to be considered. Since the scanner was so heavy, the floor of the Oxford warehouse that housed it had to be strengthened, and in order to transport it a mega-lift system had to be used to get it onto the trailer.
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"Even though we do have a lot of experience in heavyweight cargo transports, this project has really been an interesting challenge for us," Nikola Hagleitner, CEO of industrial projects for DHL Global Forwarding said in a press release.
Many big shipping companies, including DHL have expanded to this sector — which is growing fast. The medical device market was valued at 259 billion dollars and its growth rate is slightly higher than pharmaceuticals, according to DHL's website. Last spring, DHL opened two health care logistics and life science centers with cold storage units in Atlanta and Miami to ship medical products to North and South America.

In June, it launched a new air freight product called DHL Thermonet that gives customers a transparent and regulatory compliant platform so they can manage their temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical products and medical device shipments.

The company — along with other big shipping companies like FedEx and UPS — is continuing to expand its capabilities and provide services that go deeper into its customers' supply chain.

The journey to get the MRI scanner to the U.S. started in October and ended almost six weeks later. It was put onto an eight axle trailer and arrived in Antwerp, Belgium on October 29. Because of UK requirements, it had to get a special permit and was escorted by police.

It was then put onto a vessel and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Great Lakes, finally arriving in Duluth, Canada on the last ship from Europe before the lakes froze over. It was loaded onto a 19 axle step deck truck, which is 193 feet long, and a truck in front pulled it, and a truck in back pushed.

It was again escorted by police and private security and safely arrived at the University of Minnesota two days later. There it will be used for high field magnetic resonance imaging research and anatomic, physiologic, metabolic and functional studies in humans and animal models.

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