The History of FedEx The history of FedEx (2015) is a compelling story about the entrepreneurial spirit of one man and the incredible development of business in the United States. The founder of FedEx, Fredrick W. Smith, while attending Yale University, wrote a term paper on the necessity of an air cargo system that didn’t rely on air passenger carriers to move cargo and time critical packages. After graduating from college and a short stint in the military, Fred Smith bough the controlling interest in Arkansas Aviation Sales, a small company located in Little Rock Arkansas, in 1971. FedEx officially began operations on April 17th, 1973, with 389 team members and 14 aircraft, delivering 389 packages to 25 cities on the eastern seaboard. The growth of the company continued through the 1970s. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 saw tremendous growth in the aviation market in general, as the federal government relinquished economic regulatory control of the industry to the demands of a market driven economy (Smith & Cox, 2015). This spurred large and continued growth for FedEx. The company was able to buy larger aircraft and …show more content…
To manage the pick-up, movement and delivery of millions of packages daily, revolutionary technology is employed to help make the gap between people and technology seamless. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tracking operations, systems that physically track the location of delivery vehicles is a vital part of FedEx organizing strategy (ESRI, 2011). The system integrates the physical location of vehicles and intuitive software that predicts the best routing for traffic and pick-up/delivery services. FedEx (FedEx 4, 2015) Couriers carry hand held computer scanners that instantly relay position, and package delivery and pick-up status through a wireless network to FedEx’s mainframe computer server