Word: overnights
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...business heroes. Smith runs Federal with a military zeal that rubs off on his staff. He sometimes rewards outstanding work with Bravo Zulu stickers, which refer to the Navy signal flags meaning "job well done." Says Robert Sigafoos, author of the corporate profile Absolutely, Positively Overnight: "They have a 'kill or be killed' mentality, which permeates the ranks from top to bottom...
Federal Express, though, now faces hungry competitors who have turned the business into a delivery-truck version of Cannonball Run. The battle pushed down Federal's average price for an overnight shipment from $26.29 in 1981 to $19.36 this summer. Many of the rivals have copied Federal's formula. In 1981, Emery built a $60 million hub in Dayton and assembled a fleet of 67 planes. Airborne constructed its hub at an abandoned Strategic Air Command base in Wilmington, Ohio. The U.S. Postal Service has entered the field with its special $9.35 express mail service. In fiscal...
...sales: $6 billion), which has been dubbed the Brown Giant for its fleet of 62,000 chocolate-colored trucks. UPS, which started in Seattle in 1907 with six messengers and two bicycles, last year delivered 1.8 billion parcels, twice as many as the U.S. Postal Service. UPS got into overnight service in September 1982, promising arrival by 3 p.m. the next day at prices lower than Federal's. Now UPS delivers by noon, but Federal has moved up its arrival time by 90 minutes...
Since even overnight delivery may not be fast enough for a country hooked on speed, Federal Express has now developed ZapMail. To send ZapMail, a customer summons a Federal courier to pick up documents, which are then sent by facsimile transmission to another Federal Express office. There a laser printer spews out copies that are hand delivered. Elapsed time: two hours. Under development for five years with the code name Gemini Project, the $100 million electronic-mail venture got off to a slow start in July. Federal cut the price of sending 20 pages of information in half, from...