Fred Smith, the FedEx Corp. founder who revolutionized the express delivery industry, has died. He was 80. FedEx started operating in 1973, delivering small parcels and documents more quickly than the postal service. Over the next half-century, Smith, a Marine Corps veteran, oversaw the growth of a company that became something of an economic bellwether because so many other companies rely on it. Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx became a global transportation and logistics company that averages 17 million shipments per business day. Smith stepped down as CEO in 2022 but remained executive chairman, the AP reports.
Smith, a 1966 graduate of Yale University, used a business theory he came up with in college to create a delivery system based on coordinated air cargo flights centered on a main hub, a "hub and spokes" system, as it became known. The company also played a major role in the shift by American business and industry to a greater use of time-sensitive deliveries and less dependence on large inventories and warehouses. Smith once told the AP that he came up with the name Federal Express because he wanted the company to sound big and important when in fact it was a startup operation with a future far from assured. At the time, Smith was trying to land a major shipping contract with the Federal Reserve Bank that didn't work out.
Overnight shipments were new to American business and the company had to have a fleet of planes and a system of interconnecting air routes in place from the get-go. Smith's father, also named Frederick, had built a small fortune in Memphis with a regional bus line and other business ventures. Following college, Smith joined the Marines and was commissioned a second lieutenant. He left as a captain in 1969 after two tours in Vietnam for which he was decorated for bravery and wounds received in combat. In a 2023 interview, Smith said everything he did running FedEx came from his experience in the Marines, not what he learned at Yale.
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