Today FedEx employs more than 530,000 people, serving 220 countries around the world. It moves 15 million packages a day aboard a fleet of 700 airplanes, including the wide-bodied Boeing 777.
Fifty years ago Fred Smith founded the company that revolutionized business. At the sorting center at FedEx headquarters in Memphis, packages are routed around the world using computerized conveyer belts and elbow grease.
The engine of a 777 would not even fit inside the cargo hold of Smith’s first plane, now on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
Mr. Smith saw the future when he was still an undergraduate at Yale, moonlighting as a charter pilot flying computer parts. “What I was looking at was the first stages of automation of our society, moving to a computer-based society,” he said. “It was just the recognition society was automating.”
Martin asked, “Did it feel like an a-ha moment to you at the time?”
“I suppose that would be a good way to describe it.”
But first, there was Vietnam – two combat tours, a silver star, bronze star, and two purple hearts. Smith rose to the rank of captain in the Marines. A photograph in his office shows him with his platoon leaders. Two of them didn’t come back.
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