Company Founder Biographies  
Successful Entrepreneurs Company Founder Biographies: Founder bios of some of the most successful people in business today. Company Founder Biographies



Fred Smith Bio, Founder of FedEx

Born August 11, 1944, in Marks, Mississippi, to Frederick C. Smith -- founder of the Toddle House restaurant chain -- Fred Smith first conceived of FedEx in 1962 as an economics student at Yale University, where he was friends with George W. Bush and John Kerry, fellow members of the Skull and Bones society. His paper on overnight delivery services received only a C, but the notion stayed with him. After serving two tours of duty as a Marine pilot in Vietnam, he founded Federal Express in 1971 with inheritance money. By 1973, he had a fleet of 14 Dassault Falcon jets flying small packages and documents among 25 cities. He had had to relocate the business from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Memphis, Tennessee, in order to procure the proper facilities for his airplanes, and in 1978 greatly expanded his service after the deregulation of the airlines.

The company continued to develop its identity through the 1980s, briefly and unprofitably offering fax services in addition to overnight transport, and just as briefly carrying out a military transport contract it inherited when it acquired the cargo airline Flying Tigers. In 1998, it made a major acquisition of Caliber System, which brought into the organization Caliber Logistics, Roberts Express, Roadway Package Systems, and Viking Freight. The company adopted the previously unofficial nickname FedEx as its official corporate identity a couple years later.

Currently the company is under contract to carry all United States Postal Service overnight mail, through 2012, and the post office has thus become its largest customer -- a situation hearkening back to the days of the Pony Express. The brand identity is built on the expectation of absolute guaranteed on-time delivery. Smith continues to serve as chairman, president, and CEO of the FedEx Corporation, though he was widely considered a possibility for Defense Secretary when his former college friend Bush was elected President.

Read More Company Founder Biographies -

Select another successful entrepreneur below:

Copyright (c) 2008 FounderBios.com. All Rights Reserved.