FedEx Express


FedEx Express is an American cargo airline based in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. As of 2023, it was the world's largest cargo airline in terms of fleet size and freight tons flown. It is the namesake and leading subsidiary of FedEx Corporation, delivering freight and packages to more than 375 destinations over 220 countries and territories across six continents each day.
The company's global "Super Hub" is located at Memphis International Airport. In the United States, FedEx Express has a national hub at Indianapolis International Airport, and regional hubs at airports in Anchorage, Fort Worth, Greensboro, Miami, Newark, Oakland and Ontario. International regional hubs are located at airports in Cologne/Bonn, Dubai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Guangzhou, Istanbul, Liege, Milan, Mumbai, Osaka, Paris, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo, and Toronto.

History

Early history

The concept for what became Federal Express came to Fred Smith in the mid-1960s, while an undergraduate student For an economics class, he submitted a paper which argued that in modern technological society time meant money more than ever before and with the advent of miniaturized electronic circuitry, very small components had become extremely valuable. He argued that the consumer society was becoming increasingly hungry for mass-produced electronic items, but the decentralizing effect induced by these very devices gave manufacturers tremendous logistic problems in delivering the items. Smith felt that the necessary delivery speed could only be achieved by using air transport. But he believed that the U.S. air cargo system was so inflexible and bound by regulations at that time that it was completely incapable of making really fast deliveries.
In his paper, Smith proposed a new concept—have one carrier be responsible for a piece of cargo from local pick-up right through to ultimate delivery, operating its own aircraft, depots, posting stations, and delivery vans. To ensure accurate sorting and dispatching of every item of freight, the carrier would fly it from all of its pickup stations to a central clearinghouse, from where the entire operation would be controlled. For years it has been misreported that the professor teaching the course gave the paper the grade of "C", but Fred clarified in a 2004 interview that the grade is not known and the reports of a "C" grade were due to his response to a reporter who asked him what grade he received and his reply was, "I don't know, probably made my usual C." Despite the professor's opinion, Smith held on to the idea.
Smith founded Federal Express Corporation in 1971 with $4 million from his inheritance and $91 million in venture capital in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Smith was operating Little Rock Airmotive. After a lack of support from Little Rock National Airport, Smith moved the company to Memphis, Tennessee and Memphis International Airport in 1973.
File:FedEx Dassault Falcon 20.JPG|thumb|First FedEx Express aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 20 named Wendy, on display at Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
The company started overnight operations on April 17, 1973, with fourteen Dassault Falcon 20s that connected twenty-five cities in the United States. Fred Smith's childhood friend, John Fry of Ardent Studios, sent Ardent partner Terry Manning to the Federal Express home office on Democrat Road near the Memphis Airport with the first package to be put into the system. That night, 186 packages were carried. Services included both overnight and two-day package and envelope delivery services, as well as Courier Pak. Federal Express began to market itself as "the freight service company with 550-mile-per-hour delivery trucks". However, the company began to experience financial difficulties, losing up to a million USD a month. While waiting for a flight home to Memphis from Chicago after being turned down for capital by General Dynamics, Smith impulsively hopped on a flight to Las Vegas, where he won $27,000 playing blackjack. The winnings enabled the cash-strapped company to meet payroll the following Monday. "The $27,000 wasn't decisive, but it was an omen that things would get better", Smith says. In the end, he raised somewhere between $50 and $70 million, from twenty of the US's leading risk venture speculators, including such companies as the First National City Bank of New York and the Bank of America in California. At the time, Federal Express was the most highly financed new company in U.S. history, in terms of venture capital.
Federal Express installed its first drop box in 1975 which allowed customers to drop off packages without going to a company local branch. In 1976, the company became profitable with an average volume of 19,000 parcels per day.
The company's early growth was fueled importantly by its advertising. In 1973, the company promoted itself as Later, the company produced the famous television commercial "Fast Paced World", featuring fast talking actor John Moschitta Jr., under the banner: "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight."

Rapid growth

In 1977 the Air Cargo Deregulation Act removed restrictions on the routes operated by all-cargo airlines, and enabled Federal Express to purchase its first large aircraft: seven Boeing 727-100s. In 1978, the company went public and was listed on The New York Stock Exchange. The following year, it became the first shipping company to use a computer to manage packages when it launched "COSMOS", a centralized computer system to manage people, packages, vehicles, and weather scenarios in real time. In 1980, the company implemented "DADS" to coordinate on-call pickups for customers; this system allows customers to schedule pickups for the same day.
In 1980, Federal Express began service to a further 90 cities in the United States. The following year, the company introduced its overnight letter to compete with the U.S. Postal Service's Express Mail, and allowed document shipping for the first time. Later, in 1981, it started international operations with service to Canada, and officially opened its "Superhub" at the Memphis International Airport.
Federal Express' sales topped $1 billion for the first time in 1983. In the same year the company introduced ZapMail, a fax service that guaranteed the delivery of up to five pages in less than two hours for $35. ZapMail would later become a huge failure for the company, costing it hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the 1970s, with the enormous growth, FedEx needed a method for quality control. They developed the tracking number for internal use to find that packages were moving properly. This info was eventually applied to all packages and be made available to the public to find the status of one's own package. In 1986, the company introduced the "SuperTracker", a hand-held bar code scanner which brought parcel tracking to the shipping industry for the first time. Federal Express continued its rapid expansion in the late 1980s, and opened its hub at Newark Liberty International Airport in 1986 and at Indianapolis International Airport and Oakland International Airport in 1988. In 1989, the company acquired Flying Tiger Line to expand its international service, and subsequently opened a hub at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to accommodate this new, expanded service. As the volume of international shipments increased, Federal Express created Clear Electronic Customs Clearance System to expedite regulatory clearance while cargo is en route.

FedEx era

In 1994, Federal Express rebranded itself as "FedEx" for marketing purposes, officially adopting a nickname that had been used for years. Also that year, FedEx launched as the first transportation web site to offer online package tracking, which allowed customers to conduct business via Internet. In 1995, the company acquired air routes from Evergreen International to start services to China, and opened an Asia-Pacific hub at Subic Bay International Airport in the Philippines. In 1997, FedEx opened its hub at Fort Worth Alliance Airport and, in 1999, opened a European hub at Charles de Gaulle Airport in France.
In the 1990s, FedEx planned, but later abandoned, a joint service with British Airways to have BA fly a Concorde supersonic jet airliner to Shannon Airport in Ireland with FedEx packages on board, and then FedEx would have flown the packages subsonically to their delivery points in Europe. Ron Ponder, a vice president at the time, was in charge of this proposed venture.
In 1998, FedEx merged with Caliber System and reorganized as a holding company, FDX Corporation. In 2000, FDX changed its name to FedEx Corporation and standardized the names of its subsidiaries around the "FedEx" brand. The original "Federal Express" cargo airline changed its name to "FedEx Express" to distinguish its express shipping service from others offered by the FedEx parent company.
In 2001, FedEx Express signed a 7-year sole source contract to transport all Express Mail and Priority Mail for the United States Postal Service. Prior to 2001, the Postal Service contracted with multiple airlines on a regional basis for these services. This contract allowed FedEx to place drop boxes at every USPS post office. In 2007, the contract was extended until September 2013. In 2013, FedEx Express won a new 7-year contract for the services ending in 2020, beating out UPS Airlines which launched a competitive bid. In 2017, the Postal Service extended the 2013 contract to 2024. The USPS continues to be the largest customer of FedEx Express.
In December 2006, FedEx Express acquired the British courier company ANC Holdings Limited for £120 million. The acquisition added 35 sort facilities to the FedEx network and the company introduced Newark, Memphis, and Indianapolis routes directly to UK airports instead of stopping at FedEx's European hub at Charles de Gaulle Airport. In September 2007, ANC was rebranded as FedEx UK. FedEx Express also acquired Flying-Cargo Hungary Kft to expand service in Eastern Europe.