In the 1960s, a Yale student named Fred Smith had a groundbreaking idea to change the face of cargo shipping.  Smith realized that the air shipping was the future of a time-strained consumer society and that the current US air cargo industry was unfit to handle this burden.  Smith felt that one carrier could be responsible for every level of the shipping progress, including: local pickup, the operation of depots, posting stations and delivery vans.  Smith’s company would become a reality as he first founded Federal Express in 1971.

On this day, April 17th, in 1973, Federal Express begins overnight operations.  The original Federal Express fleet included fourteen aircraft that serviced 25 major U.S. cities with overnight and 2 day shipping options.  Federal Express took on the marketing slogan, “the freight service company with 550-mile-per-hour delivery trucks.

In its first few years of operation, Federal Express experienced major financial difficulties.  Fred Smith had to raise nearly $70 million in funds from risk venture speculators, which kept the company afloat and made Federal Express one of the highly financed new company in U.S. history.  Investors were not disappointed as Federal Express soon grew into one of the leading shipping companies, FedEx. FedEx generated $39.3 billion in revenue in 2011 and has the largest airline in the the world in terms of freight transported.