Word: freights
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...overnight delivery kind. Like the microwave oven and the videocassette recorder, air packages have become such a convenience that people now wonder how they ever got along without them. Overnight delivery is also an exploding, $5 billion-a-year business. One of the fly-by-night companies, Emery Air Freight, ships Cabbage Patch Kids for Coleco, couture dresses for Bloomingdale's and personal computers for IBM. During the Christmas season, the boom time for shippers, Federal Express will carry almost 500,000 parcels daily. Last week the company said it shipped some 7.9 million items during November, up more...
...ribs out fast, they are not any good." Romantics in a rush to send flowers can dial Roseland Express, a California firm that for $35 will whisk a dozen fresh, long-stemmed roses to any point in the U.S. overnight on Airborne Freight...
Federal Express invented the present overnight delivery system. Both Emery and Airborne for decades had shipped freight on commercial airliners. But Frederick Smith, 40, dreamed up the idea of combining a squadron of planes with a fleet of delivery vans. As legend has it, Smith first proposed the plan in a 1965 term paper that earned him a C in an economics course at Yale. After two tours in Viet Nam, one as a Marine pilot, Smith decided to use a $10 million inheritance to try out his idea, and founded Federal...
Federal made its breakthrough partly by realizing that its customers were not professional shipping agents but secretaries and executives who knew little about air freight. With a $35 million annual ad budget, Federal paid for a series of catchy commercials featuring a cold-eyed boss who talked like a record played at triple speed. As the rivalry has heated up, so has the competitive tone of the fast-delivery advertising. Purolator calls Federal the "inflexible express" and Airborne taunts, "Federal Express does better advertising, so Airborne has to give you better service." Federal retorts, "Why fool around with anyone else...
...coming of, first, the railroads, then oil and gas pipelines, eventually turned "Clinton's ditch" into something of an anachronism, and now, traffic on the system is down to a trickle. As recently as 1973, commercial shippers moved a total of 2,548,113 tons of freight on the New York State barge canal system. Last year they moved only 579,777 tons. Shippers have all but abandoned the canals, which still charge no tolls...