Leipzig Klaus-Dieter Bugiel recently delivered a rock star’s forgotten guitar to a concert in Stockholm, and he just had four Brembo sports brakes that were urgently needed by Porsche and stuck in a traffic jam on the motorway, flown out by helicopter from a nearby McDonald’s parking lot. With his Leipzig company Fox-Courier, the 61-year-old reminds many of the legendary fireman Red Adair. Bugiel’s transport company is always called when there’s a real fire.
The fact that Bugiel’s career could have taken a different course is shown by the career path of his industry colleague Heiko Nowak, with whom he made an appointment on a cloudy autumn day on a viewing platform at Leipzig/Halle Airport. Nowak, until a year ago a member of the management board at the forwarding giant Rhenus, has been managing the transport company WP in Zwickau since 2021, a forwarding company with a turnover of 130 million euros, 400 vehicles and 1000 employees.
Both chose the meeting place with care. At the former East German trade fair airport, they want to report on what has happened to them since the fall of the Wall exactly 33 years ago – one in the East, the other in the West after moving from their homeland. Their stories are by no means representative, but perhaps typical.
Go or stay? When the Berlin Wall fell 33 years ago on November 9, it hit the two students at the wrong time. Both lived in the East, Bugiel came from Leipzig, Nowak from Eisleben, both were studying to study engineering. After three years in the National People’s Army, the then 23-year-old Nowak enrolled at the University of Jena, while Bugiel, who was five years his senior and already had a first degree in “Means of Rationalization Construction”, was cramming distance learning. His main job at VEB Sprio Holzhausen was assembling paint spray guns, with which Trabis in nearby Zwickau were given their pastel paintwork.
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The two of them – like the vast majority of GDR citizens – had never heard of their later common profession, “logistics”. “The term was simply unknown in the new federal states at the time,” says Nowak. And Bugiel agrees with him.
Different reasons for moving to the west
At the end of 1989, it was actually Bugiel who was the first to be trusted by colleagues and the authorities to move west. A year earlier, the parents illegally fled to Grandma’s in Minden, which brought the Filius, who then applied for an exit visa himself, to spend a night in Stasi custody. However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the then 28-year-old decided to stay – even when the workforce at VEB Sprio was reduced from 550 to twelve employees and Bugiel had to switch to a temporary employment agency.
Started with an order for 248 marks.
(Photo: Felix Zimmermann)
Unlike Bugiel, his fellow student studying in Jena did not initially think of leaving the country. “It was my wife who pushed for it in September 1990,” Nowak recalls. She enrolled at Jena’s university for biology, but feels spied on there even after reunification.
Because a friend who fled East Germany in 1984 lives in Dortmund, the couple settles in the north of the city in the Ruhr area. In order to make ends meet, Nowak hires himself out as an electrician, installs air conditioning systems in department stores and enrolls at Dortmund University.
There he discovers the position as a student assistant for “Logistic Consulting” at the chair for materials handling and warehousing on the notice board. He secretly puts the note, which he still has today, in his pocket. “Everyone was surprised that I was the only applicant,” he says decades later, still gleefully pleased about his coup. “But that’s how I got into logistics.”
At the same time, Klaus-Dieter Bugiel works in Leipzig for a company that a friend recommended to him. He drives a rickety Passat to Normandy for Eurokurier to supply them with urgent printing machine spare parts, he delivers a carpet to the Kiev exhibition halls, and medicines go to Poland.
In 1993 the decision was made to do all this on his own account. He rents a place in a former prison at Halle/Leipzig airport. “Cell 10” is written above the entrance to the office, which Bugiel stuffs with two desks and dozens of telephone directories for all of Germany. The amateur radio operator calls the company Fox-Courier.
In delivery services for Burger King, Rossmann, Siemens and Eurocopter
He bought the first vehicle, a used Fiat Fiorino, for 3,000 marks, and laboriously scraped together the 25,000 marks of liable GmbH capital – half by bringing in material assets. “We even stated our office plant as equity,” says the Saxon.
The first trip starts on May 1st, Labor Day, from Wurzen to Leipzig, where 22 doors have to be delivered. The young company received 248 marks for the job. As if you wouldn’t believe him, Bugiel presents the handwritten order in the photo collection on his mobile phone.
For Heiko Nowak, on the other hand, a steep career starts in the west a short time later. In 1996 he was hired by the warehouse logistics specialist Exel, which was later taken over by DHL, where he coordinated food deliveries for Burger King, Pizza Hut and Wienerwald. Two years later, a headhunter guides him to the Tengelmann Group. He is supposed to rebuild the logistics for his former drugstore chain kd – and at the age of 34 he becomes managing director of a joint venture with the forwarding agent Fiege.
Returns to East Germany at the age of 55.
(Photo: Felix Zimmermann)
When Rossmann bought kd in 2003, he received a call from Heinz Fiege on the car phone. “The company boss at the time heard about the takeover and immediately offered me a job,” reports Nowak. Fiege then sends its new employee to Worms and Donauwörth, among other places. There he will look after logistics customers such as Siemens and Eurocopter.
At that time, Klaus-Dieter Bugiel had just moved into his new office floor after he had to leave the prison after the building was demolished. He got his first computer from Vobis in 1994 for 4,800 marks. In the same year, after friends and acquaintances helped him out with their Trabants and Barkas delivery vans, he treated himself to the first brand-new company vehicle, a Golf GTI. But it soon turns out to be a bad buy.
“The lowered car was unsuitable for East German roads and kept hitting the ground,” recalls the company boss with horror. The portability didn’t look much better. A photo shows a Persian carpet rolled up on the GTI roof, fixed by hand through the sunroof.
Later, between 2000 and 2004, Bugiel completely dispensed with its own courier vehicles and tried subcontractors. But they are becoming increasingly difficult to find. In an about-face, he relies on his own fleet again, quickly increasing to 15 vehicles. In 2007, he decided to offer Fox-Courier’s services on internet freight exchanges in order to utilize them on return journeys.
Home remains the east of Germany
In the same year, Heiko Nowak leaves the Münsterland logistics giant after a change of management at Fiege has dramatically changed his situation. His new employer is called Rhenus. His career continues there – until he moves back east in 2021.
On this November day, from the roof of the former airport tower, the eyes of the unequal logistics managers wander over the old concrete runways of Leipzig Airport. You can also see the former shabby reception building, which survived the fall of the Wall to this day. The courier entrepreneur hopes that his son, who was born in 1993 when the company was founded, will soon take over Fox-Courier.
Colleague Nowak sounds more thoughtful. “Professionally, I have no regrets,” says the forwarding director in retrospect. But he would have liked to come back much earlier. “Here I feel more at home in dealing with people,” admits the native East German.
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