The project would not have been successful without support from many people in different branches of CPEL and CPG. We express our appreciation to Mingguang Liu, deputy general manager of CPG; Biao Wang, general manager of CPEL; Kai Li and Zhanhong Ma, deputy general managers of CPEL; Gang Dai, CPEL Operations Department; Fuchun Xia and Zhanling Zhang, CPEL Express Department; Yongping Jin, CPEL Logistics Department; Yanjun Zhang, CPG Network Operations Department; Ning Xu and Fuwen Han, CPEL Development Department; and Lede Bao, CPEL Marketing Department. We also extend our sincere gratitude to the following people who supported our field investigations: Fu Sheng and Xu Chen, Shanghai Postal Express and Logistics Corporation; Yaohua Zhang, Shanghai Postal Research Institute; Zilv Xu, Postal Express and Logistics Corporation of Jiangsu Province; and Quan Wu and Baishun Liu, Beijing Postal Express and Logistics Corporation. In addition, we thank the following graduate students from Tongji University who provided invaluable contributions: Daqin Wang, Yilin Tu, Junhua Sun, Yida Xue, and Wanting Li.
The research is partially supported by the Projects of National Natural Science Foundation of China [71102071, 70832005]. Finally, the first author states that this paper does not represent the official policy of China Postal Express and Logistics Corporation (CPEL).