FedEx: 50 facts to mark the 50th anniversary of logistics giant's takeoff in Memphis
FedEx and Memphis.
The names share only one letter — and Fred Smith certainly can afford to buy that vowel, "E" — but they are now intertwined in innumerable ways.
That story is told, definitively and seriously, by The Commercial Appeal's Omer Yusuf, as the newspaper examines FedEx at 50. But this is not that story.
This is a list, a compendium, a compilation of mostly fun facts about the overnight shipping company that — like such Memphis predecessors as Piggy Wiggly and Elvis Presley — changed the way the world operates and has become synonymous with Memphis.
So here are 50 facts, for FedEx's 50th birthday, culled from the archives of The Commercial Appeal and provided by the FedEx Media Relations team. (Just imagine the words "according to FedEx" next to most of the statistical claims.)
1. Rock-y start: Frederick W. Smith — or Fred Smith, as he is generally known — founded his Federal Express company in Little Rock, Arkansas, incorporating the name in 1971.
2. Hail, Yale: Smith developed the idea for FedEx in a 1965 term paper at Yale University. Smith proposed an air route system specifically for time-sensitive shipments — medicine, computer parts and so on — that didn’t rely on passenger routes. “If a hospital in Texas needs a heart valve tomorrow,” Smith told Memphis Magazine in 1978, “it needs it tomorrow.”
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3. Hub-ba, hub-ba: So why did FedEx decide to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2023, not in 2021? Because the company (not to mention its planes) didn't really take off until 1973, when Smith chose the centrally located and not already overly busy Memphis International Airport as the location for the company's "hub," where arriving packages would be sorted for delivery to their destinations.
4. Marksman: Smith, incidentally, was born Aug. 11, 1944, in Marks, Mississippi, making him arguably the most remarkable man to make a mark out of Marks.
5. Opening night: On its first night of operations — April 17, 1973 — FedEx shipped 186 packages to 25 U.S. cities via 14 Dassault Falcon jets.
6. Famous Falcon: One of those jets, named "Wendy," is now on display in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
7. Weight gain: FedEx now averages more than 15.5 million packages and 24 million pounds of freight a day.
8. Population explosion: On its historic first night, FedEx had 389 employees. The company now employs more than 530,000 people worldwide.
9. Casting coup: In the 2000 movie "Cast Away," partly filmed in Memphis, Tom Hanks played one such employee: He was a Memphis-based FedEx "systems analyst" who, after a cargo plane crash, is stranded on a tropical island where be befriends a stray volleyball, which he names "Wilson." Hanks received a Best Actor Oscar nomination; however, the Academy ignored the volleyball.
10. No in-joke: The "W" in Frederick W. Smith does not stand for "Wilson." It stands for "Wallace."
11. Overnight sensation: Arguably one of the most successful ad campaigns in history, FedEx introduced the "Absolutely Positively Overnight" slogan in 1978 and continued the theme until 1983. The phrase entered everyday speech and continues to be quoted in conversation and parodied in pop culture.
12. Name game: Embracing what linguists call a "syllabic abbreviation" of the original name, the company that most people once referred to as "Federal Express" officially became "FedEx" in 2000: a new name for a new millennium.
13. Ugh: From 1997 to 2000, the FedEx Corporation was known as FDX Corporation.
14. Wings of Eagles: Founded in 2012, the FedEx "Purple Eagle" program names planes for a child or grandchild of a FedEx employee who is or has been a patient at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
15. Vax populi: On Dec. 14, 2020, "FedEx delivered a spark of hope with the world watching," The Commercial Appeal reported, when the company completed its first shipment of COVID-19 vaccine to a hospital in Massachusetts.
16. Dose were the days: In the first year of distribution, FedEx delivered approximately 300 million doses of the vaccine from manufacturers and distributors to centers throughout the U.S., with an average delivery time of less than 20 hours.
17. Panda power: In 1987, before pandas were regular attractions in Memphis, close to 250,000 people visited the Memphis Zoo to see Xiu-Hua (pronounced "shoo wah"), a giant panda who was here for a month, as a special loan from a Mexico City zoo. Of course, a special FedEx cargo plane handled the panda peregrinations.
18. Be my Bei Bei: Xiu-Hua was not unique. In 2019, FedEx transported Bei Bei, a panda who was born at the National Zoo in Washington in 2015, to a conservation center in the panda homeland of China. Reportedly named in a collaboration between China and Michelle Obama ("Bei Bei" means "precious" or "treasure"), Bei Bei was probably the most famous of the multiple pandas who have been FedEx "customers." In fact, FedEx has become so adept at panda transport they refer to the planes that handle the job as the "Panda Express."
19. Was his name Beary White? In 2020, FedEx delivered an 850-pound polar bear from Rochester, New York, to the St. Louis Zoo. The bear took a plane ride via FedEx Express and then was transported on a temperature-controlled truck transport via FedEx Custom Critical.
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20. Horsin' around: In other animal news, FedEx Express delivered to London the 10 horses that made up the U.S. Equestrian team that participated in the 2012 Olympics.
21. Chimp champs: In yet more animal news, FedEx helped the Save the Chimps organization rescue the "Sunrise Seven" — Vanilla, Shake, Cayleb, Ernesta, Jake, Jeff and Magic — from a closed California animal refuge. The chimpanzees were flown to the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Ft. Pierce, Florida.
22. Seal (or sea lion) of approval: In 2009, FedEx moved seven beluga whales and four Pacific white-sided dolphins from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago to the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration in Hartford, Connecticut. After the Shedd Aquarium was renovated, FedEx moved all the cetaceans (that's a fancy word for whales, dolphins and porpoises) back to Chicago. FedEx also moved two sea lions from Tacoma, Washington, to the Shedd.
23. A shell of a job: In 2010, FedEx Custom Critical moved 70,000 sea turtle eggs from the oil-threatened Gulf Coast to an incubation facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Later, the hatchlings were released into the ocean.
24. Prehistoric animals, too: In 2014, FedEx transported a rare Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton from the Museum of the Rockies in Montana to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
25. More dino lore: It's a few million years late for a rematch, but last year, FedEx moved the thousand-pound skull of a Triceratops — the three-horned herbivore believe to be T. Rex's mortal enemy — from Colorado University to the Smithsonian in Washington.
26. Tut tut: King Tut's "jammies" were not included (contrary to Steve Martin's assertion on his hit novelty song, the 18th-dynasty Egyptian boy pharaoh was not "buried in his jammies"), but a gilded bed and close to 17 tons of other priceless artifacts from King Tutankhamun's 3,300-year-old tomb were ferried by FedEx around the world, from Los Angeles to Paris, for an international touring exhibit in 2019.
27. Shipping the ship: In 2006, FedEx transported 90 tons of material, including a 3,000-pound piece of the ship's hull, from Milan, Italy, to Atlanta for a show titled "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition."
28. Super! A longtime NFL partner, FedEx now routinely delivers the Vince Lombardi Trophy from the NFL’s New York headquarters to whatever city is hosting America's most grandiose sporting event. Most recently, FedEx delivered the Super Bowl LVII trophy to Phoenix in February. FedEx has delivered the trophy 23 times.
29. Swanky: "Ever had a cake delivered by FedEx?" reporter Max Garland asked in a 2021 story in The Commercial Appeal. "Actress Hilary Swank has. In 2018, FedEx Custom Critical delivered a specially made organic wedding cake to Swank’s wedding."
30. Narrow escape: On April 7, 1994, Federal Express flight engineer Auburn R. Calloway, who was facing a dismissal hearing, boarded FedEx Flight 705 with a guitar case containing several hammers and a speargun. He attacked the crew with hammers in an attempt to crash the cargo jet. The struggle was violent and the plane at times was out of control, but the crew subdued Calloway and landed the aircraft successfully. Calloway was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison for attempted murder and attempted air piracy.
31. Book it: Dave Hirschman, a reporter with The Commercial Appeal who covered Flight 705 extensively, wrote a book about the case that was published in 1997, titled "Hijacked: The True Story of the Heroes of Flight 705."
32. Fore! In 1986, FedEx became the title sponsor of what then became known as the Federal Express St. Jude Classic. The professional golf tournament debuted in 1958 as the Memphis Open, and in 1969 it became the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic, with its charity component going to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which Thomas had founded. The PGA tournament is now known as the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
33. Forum: In 2002, FedEx paid a reported $92 million for the naming rights to the Memphis Grizzlies new arena, which opened in 2004. Memphians should be happy: "FedExForum" has a nice ring to it, and it sure beats (for example) the moniker affixed to Louisville's basketball arena, the KFC Yum! Center.
34. Movie moguls: In addition to delivering packages, Fred Smith has delivered entertainment: In the late 1990s, he became the financial backer of Alcon Entertainment, an independent production company that has created such films as "My Dog Skip," "Blade Runner 2049" and the Oscar-winning "The Blind Side." Meanwhile, Molly Smith, Fred's daughter, became fascinated with the film business, and in 2013 co-founded the Black Label Media production company, which was a partner in "La La Land" and has produced such films as "Sicario" and the recent biopic "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody." Younger sister Rachel Smith also got bit by the movie bug, and has been a producer on such Black Label films as the recent aerial epic, "Devotion."
35. Tannenbaum: Over the past 18 years, FedEx Freight has delivered some 15,000 live Christmas trees to military families through the "Trees for Troops" program of the St. Louis-based Christmas SPIRIT Foundation.
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36. More than Amazon, fewer than Santa Claus: FedEx delivers to more than 220 countries and territories, including "every address in the United States," according to FedEx.
37. Wing it: FedEx operates more than 700 aircraft that serve more than 650 airports worldwide.
38. Grounded: FedEx utilizes more than 215,000 motorized vehicles for ground delivery.
39. Mimsy were the borogroves (but the deliveries were right on time): Did you enjoy the large topiary sculptures of Alice in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts and other Lewis Carroll characters in the "Alice's Adventures at the Garden" show last year at the Memphis Botanic Garden? If so, thank FedEx: The company transported the topiary here from Atlanta.
40. Oh, baby: During the baby formula shortage of 2022 (a perhaps under-reported supply-side crisis so acute it has its own Wikipedia page), FedEx coordinated with the federal government in May and June to deliver enough formula to agencies serving hard-hit communities to fill what a FedEx spokesperson called "millions of baby bottles."
41. All's well that ends well: FedEx delivered a 4-ton drill and 5,700 pounds of equipment to Midland, Texas, for use in the rescue of 18-month-old "Baby Jessica" (Jessica McClure), who had fallen down a well in her aunt's backyard. The retrieval effort, which took 58 hours, garnered worldwide attention.
42. But did it include a cocoa Quasimodo? In 2011, FedEx shipped a delectable 3-ton chocolate replica of the Notre-Dame cathedral from the Salon du Chocolat in Paris to a chocolate show in New York.
43. I'll drink to that: In 2004, FedEx transported 504,000 bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau wine from France to Japan, for an annual "uncorking" event hosted by Japanese oenophiles.
44. Engagement: FedEx Cares is the company's "global community engagement program." The website (fedexcares.com) provides information on numerous initiatives, at home and abroad (including earthquake relief for Syria and Turkey).
45. On track: Among its key innovations, FedEx is created with developing the "tracking number" in 1979. The concept is now ubiquitous.
46. Modest start: Apparently, the first mention of Fred Smith and Federal Express in The Commercial Appeal occurred on Aug. 29, 1972, in a story titled "Ex-Marine Pilot Realizes Dream." The story reports that Smith, a former Memphian and decorated Vietnam veteran, created a company in Little Rock that operates "a fleet of small air cargo carriers" to airlift "priority cargo for shippers into cities being abandoned by the long-range, large-capacity jet aircraft." The story ran in the newspaper's "C" section on page 20, just past the TV listings.
47. Round two: The second time Fred Smith and Federal Express appeared in The Commercial Appeal was on Dec. 30, 1972. The story, which did not carry a byline, ran on page 28 of the business section, and reported: "Jet Air Freight Line Weighs Opening Branch in Memphis."
48. Positive press: By 1973, the newspapers were getting the message. "$3 Million Sorting Center Taking Shape at Airport," reported the Memphis Press-Scimitar. The Commercial Appeal, meanwhile, was prophetic: "Federal Express is zooming into Memphis," wrote the morning newspaper, "where it eventually may become one of the city's largest employers."
49. Fred $mith: By 1983, Fred Smith was "the nation's highest paid chief executive," the Press-Scimitar reported. (Forbes placed his earnings that year at close to $52 million.)
50. Vanished: In 2012, FedEx delivered robotic equipment to Hawaii as part of a mission to locate the missing aircraft of Amelia Earhart, the famed aviator who disappeared (along with her navigator) during a 1928 flight over the Pacific. The plane was not discovered, so Earhart — unlike most FedEx packages — remains lost.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: FedEx: The history of the logistics giant. Here are 50 facts.
