Imagine a patient in São Paulo, Brazil, waiting for a life-saving pacemaker that is unavailable on the local market. The only compatible device is located in Tuttlingen, Germany. Will it arrive in time for surgery? It is precisely to address such critical situations that trans-o-flex has launched a new division specialising in high-priority shipments. The unit, called Special Services, was officially introduced at the 2025 edition of transport logistic in Munich.
“When a customer has an urgent, sensitive or particularly demanding shipment, our Special Services team takes care of it,” explains Martin Reder, the company’s managing director. The initiative has been created with the explicit aim of being there when speed of response can truly make a difference. The solutions offered are fully customised: they range from direct delivery with a dedicated courier, who collects the shipment within 90 to 120 minutes of confirmation and proceeds without any stops to the final destination, to the use of temperature-controlled vehicles that guarantee the integrity of the contents throughout the journey.
It is not only about road transport. Reder points out that the new division can also activate hybrid logistics solutions such as Onboard Courier (Obc), Next Flight Out or even the chartering of a private aircraft. The Obc, for instance, is the ideal solution for transporting a delicate item like a pacemaker from a German factory to a hospital in South America. The process is precise and fast: an initial courier collects the device and hands it over to a handler at Frankfurt airport, where a dedicated courier boards the first available flight to São Paulo with the pacemaker as their only hand luggage. This eliminates delays related to checked baggage, and once at the destination, after customs clearance, the courier proceeds directly to the hospital to hand over the device personally to an authorised contact.
Alongside service expansion, trans-o-flex continues to invest in its infrastructure network. On 19 May 2025, the company inaugurated a new logistics centre in Steinach, Bavaria, along the A3 motorway between Regensburg and Deggendorf. This joint facility serves the group’s two German networks: trans-o-flex Express, which handles the transport of goods at controlled temperatures between 15 and 25 degrees Celsius, and trans-o-flex ThermoMed, which specialises in refrigerated shipments between 2 and 8 degrees. Until now, these deliveries were processed in separate facilities; with the new site, greater capacity and operational synergies are achieved.
From the Steinach hub, shipments are dispatched to a broad area that includes Regensburg, Passau, Landshut and regions near the borders with Austria and the Czech Republic. At the core of the centre is an automatic sorting system capable of handling up to 4,500 parcels per hour. Each package can weigh up to 50 kilograms and reach considerable dimensions, and the system includes a calibrated scale that automatically measures and records both weight and volume. The facility features 29 bays for heavy goods vehicles and 79 for vans, and will employ around one hundred people.
