FedEx founder Fred Smith, who transformed parcel delivery, dead at 80
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FedEx was conceived in a paper that Mr Frederick Smith wrote as a Yale University undergraduate in 1965.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Alex Traub
NEW YORK – Mr Frederick Smith, who bet everything he had on a plan to revolutionise freight transport, courting disaster early on but ultimately winning vindication in the form of power in Washington, billions in personal wealth and changes in how people all over the world send and receive goods, died on June 21. He was 80.
His death was announced by FedEx in a statement that did not provide further details.
FedEx was conceived in a paper that Mr Smith wrote as a Yale University undergraduate in 1965. He argued that an increasingly automated economy would depend on fast and dependable door-to-door shipping of small packages containing computer parts. He got a C.
Today, FedEx employs more than 500,000 people and operates the world’s largest fleet of cargo aircraft. On an average day, the company ships more than 16 million packages in about 220 countries and territories.
Like Google, FedEx created a new service that came to be seen as so essential that the corporate name is now a widely recognisable verb.
Mr Smith was celebrated as one of the great business minds and executives of his time.
He was well prepared for the industry he helped create. He flew planes as a teenager and then served two tours of duty in Vietnam as a Marine Corps pilot. His father, formerly chairman of the Dixie Greyhound Lines, was known as the Bus King of the South.
Aside from seeing the need for national overnight delivery, Mr Smith’s greatest innovation was a hub-and-spoke system of routes. He based the sorting of packages in Memphis, Tennessee, where he found an unused airplane hangar. He flew his planes at night, when the skies were relatively empty.
A novelty at the time, the hub system has since been adopted throughout the airfreight industry.
Success translated into decades of influence in US politics. Mr Smith got a personal meeting with then President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office. He was a pallbearer at Senator John McCain’s funeral.
He was closest to former president George W. Bush. Mr Smith was widely reported to be in the running to serve as Mr Bush’s secretary of defence before withdrawing from consideration.
After Mr Smith’s death, Mr Bush released a statement hailing Mr Smith, “my Yale fraternity brother”, as “one of the finest Americans of our generation”. NYTIMES
