48 Fun Facts About FedEx

FedEx was founded in 1971 in which city, before moving its operations two years later?

Little Rock, Arkansas: the first packages flew only after Smith moved the company to an airport that offered spare hangars and promised improvements.

Which city is home to FedEx's headquarters and its main air hub?

Memphis, Tennessee: after founder Fred Smith died in 2025, the city renamed its airport Frederick W. Smith International in his honour.

Fred Smith first sketched the idea for a next-day delivery network in what?

A term paper at Yale: his economics professor was unimpressed, and Smith later could not recall the grade, guessing it was his usual C.

Fred Smith founded FedEx hoping to land which institution as its first customer?

The Federal Reserve: Smith pitched flying its cheques between cities by next morning, and though that deal fell through, the 'Federal' in Federal Express stayed.

On its first night of operations in April 1973, how many packages did FedEx carry?

186 packages flew on 14 small jets to 25 cities that night; in 1976 the nightly average reached 19,000 and the company moved into profit.

FedEx began nightly service in 1973 with fourteen small jets built by which manufacturer?

Dassault built the Falcon 20, a French business jet that FedEx refitted for cargo; airline rules kept the newcomer to small aircraft until 1977.

Legend says FedEx's Fred Smith turned the company's last $5,000 into $27,000 in Las Vegas playing what?

Blackjack: Smith later said the win 'wasn't decisive, but it was an omen that things would get better', and he went on to raise a further $11 million.

How does the famous FedEx slogan "When it absolutely, positively has to be there…" end?

Overnight: the line ran with an early-1980s ad starring fast-talker John "Motormouth" Moschitta Jr., whose breakneck delivery in it won a Clio Award.

After Congress deregulated air cargo in 1977, what were the first large aircraft FedEx bought?

Boeing 727s: seven arrived after Fred Smith led the lobbying campaign that persuaded Congress to lift rules keeping cargo carriers to small aircraft.

ZapMail, launched in 1984 and a costly flop, was a FedEx service for sending what?

Faxes: ZapMail sent up to five pages in under two hours for $35, until customers found it cheaper to buy their own fax machines, costing FedEx hundreds of millions.

Which veteran cargo airline did FedEx buy in the late 1980s to gain its international routes?

Flying Tiger Line was started in 1945 by a pilot of the wartime Flying Tigers, who brought fellow veterans of the unit in to fly cargo with him.

After FedEx bought Caliber System in 1998, its parcel carrier RPS was renamed as which FedEx service?

FedEx Ground: RPS had been putting barcodes on parcels since 1985, and its trucks gave a company built on aircraft a cheaper way to deliver.

Which chain of copy shops did FedEx buy in 2004 and later rename FedEx Office?

Kinko's was founder Paul Orfalea's own nickname, earned by his curly hair; his first shop near a California campus got so busy he wheeled the copier onto the sidewalk.

In 1994 fedex.com became the first transport website to let customers do what?

Track a package online: the data was already there, because FedEx couriers had been scanning every parcel with hand-held barcode readers since 1986.

FedEx agreed in 2015 to pay €4.4 billion for TNT Express, a courier headquartered in which country?

The Netherlands: UPS had tried to buy the Dutch courier first, but EU competition regulators objected and it pulled out two years before FedEx stepped in.

TNT, the courier FedEx took over in 2016, began in 1946 as one truck in which Australian city?

Sydney: Ken Thomas bought a five-ton truck to haul timber while keeping his office job, and his firm later took the name Thomas Nationwide Transport.

What is hidden in the negative space of the FedEx wordmark, between the 'E' and the 'x'?

A right-pointing arrow: designer Lindon Leader says nobody set out to draw one, but he spotted it in a tightly spaced trial and built a custom typeface to sharpen it.

The first jet FedEx ever flew is now in the collection of which institution?

The Smithsonian: FedEx gave the museum the small business jet it began with after about ten years of package flights, and it is on show at the centre beside Dulles Airport.

Which two colours make up the standard FedEx logo that all units were told to adopt from 2016?

Purple and orange: until 2016 the second half of the logo changed colour from one division to the next, and FedEx dropped the rest because orange was the scheme people recognised.

In which 2000 film does Tom Hanks play a FedEx troubleshooter stranded on a desert island?

Cast Away: FedEx paid nothing for its starring role, and hesitated before saying yes because the script has one of its own planes crash into the Pacific.

What did a 2003 FedEx Super Bowl ad, spoofing Tom Hanks's desert-island film, reveal inside the survivor's unopened package?

A satellite phone, plus a GPS locator, fishing rod, water purifier and seeds: 'Just silly stuff,' says the woman who opens it, listing the very things that would have eased or ended his years on the island.

What is painted on the one FedEx package that Tom Hanks's stranded Chuck Noland refuses to open?

Golden angel wings: he ties the parcel to his raft still sealed and, once home, drives it to the Texas ranch of the sculptor who sent it.

Tom Hanks's stranded FedEx man talks to a volleyball named after which sporting goods brand?

Wilson: after gashing his hand he flings the ball aside, then turns the bloody handprint into a face and keeps it as his only companion.

Starting in 2007, FedEx became title sponsor of the season-long playoffs of which sport?

PGA Tour golf: the first FedEx Cup's $10 million bonus was not paid in cash but into the winner's retirement account, locked until he turned 45.

In 1995 FedEx became the only US all-cargo airline with rights to fly to which country?

China: FedEx bought the route rights from another American carrier, then built a hub at Subic Bay in the Philippines to feed next-day flights across Asia.

From 1999 to 2024, FedEx held the naming rights to the stadium of which NFL team?

Washington Commanders: in July 2020 FedEx became the first major sponsor to ask the team to drop its old Redskins name, and a review was announced the next day.

In 1990 FedEx became the first service company to win which American award for quality?

The Malcolm Baldrige Award: Congress named it for Ronald Reagan's commerce secretary after he was killed in a rodeo accident in 1987.

Which NASCAR team ran the FedEx-sponsored No. 11 car in the Cup Series from 2005 to 2024?

Joe Gibbs Racing: Jason Leffler began 2005 in the FedEx car, and Denny Hamlin took it over late that year and raced in FedEx colours until the sponsor left after 2024.

In which US military branch did Fred Smith serve in Vietnam, earning a Silver Star?

The Marine Corps: his Silver Star citation says he ran through enemy fire to pull wounded men clear, then led a flanking attack that routed a North Vietnamese unit.

Fred Smith's own $4 million stake in FedEx at its 1971 founding came from where?

A family inheritance: his father, who built a Southern bus line that became part of Greyhound, had died when Fred was four.

Which post in George W. Bush's first Cabinet was decorated Vietnam veteran Fred Smith tipped for?

Secretary of Defense: Bush, an old Yale fraternity brother, wrote that Smith was his first choice for the Pentagon in 2000, but he declined for medical reasons and Donald Rumsfeld got the job.

At Yale, Fred Smith joined which secret society in the same year as future senator John Kerry?

Skull and Bones tapped both men for its class of 1966 and George W. Bush two years later, setting up 2004's all-Bonesman presidential race.

Who succeeded Fred Smith as FedEx chief executive in June 2022?

Raj Subramaniam had joined FedEx in 1991 as a junior marketing analyst; Smith, then 77, stayed on as executive chairman.

Which contract, worth about $850 million, did FedEx decline to renew in 2019?

US express deliveries for Amazon brought in only 1.3% of FedEx's revenue, and the retailer was fast becoming a rival with its own planes and vans.

What nickname has FedEx used since 1981 for its main air hub?

The Superhub: its nightly sort made FedEx's home airport the world's busiest for cargo for nearly two decades. Worldport is rival UPS's hub in Louisville.

Where does FedEx Express have its national US hub, second only to the main one?

Indianapolis: FedEx has sorted packages there since 1988, and its freighters are the main reason the city's airport has ranked among America's ten busiest for cargo.

FedEx opened its main European hub in 1999 at which airport?

Paris Charles de Gaulle: FedEx's early push abroad had lost money for years before it settled on France for its European base.

FedEx and UPS both run big hubs in which city, where trans-Pacific freighters stop to refuel?

Anchorage: by landing there to refuel, a freighter crossing between Asia and the lower 48 states can take off with less fuel and more cargo.

Which Asian city's airport overtook FedEx's home airport as the world's busiest for cargo in 2010?

Hong Kong took the lead in 2010; a pandemic surge in e-commerce put FedEx's hub back on top for a single year, 2020.

FedEx was the first customer in 2021 for the BrightDrop electric vans of which carmaker?

GM: FedEx ordered the first 500 of the vans as it set out to make its whole delivery fleet electric, part of a pledge of carbon-neutral operations by 2040.

FedEx was to be the launch customer for the freighter version of which giant airliner, before delays made it cancel?

Airbus A380: with deliveries running more than two years late, FedEx cancelled its ten freighters and ordered Boeing 777s instead, and the cargo version was never built.

Which FedEx unit became a separate publicly traded company in a June 2026 spin-off?

Freight: FedEx built the trucking arm by merging two carriers it had bought, Viking and American Freightways, then set it free in 2026 to trade as a company of its own.

By long-standing company tradition, each FedEx aircraft is named after whom?

An employee's child: the tradition began with FedEx's very first jet, which was named Wendy after founder Fred Smith's daughter.

Besides its mild weather, what did Fred Smith say made his hub city the right choice?

Its central location: the city sat in the middle of the country, and its airport promised improvements and had hangars to spare.

Fred Smith's FedEx model of routing every package through a single sorting point borrowed from what?

A bank clearing house: Smith reasoned that just as every bank sends someone to one room to swap cheques, every package could fly to one hub and out again.

What was the name of the holding company FedEx reorganised into in October 1997?

It began operations in January 1998 with the Caliber System purchase, and took the FedEx Corporation name in January 2000.

What was the name of FedEx's 2009 ad campaign attacking UPS and the Teamsters union?

Brown Bailout was FedEx's label for a labour-law change that would make its drivers easier to unionise; FactCheck.org called it an abuse of the term, since UPS sought no public money.

By 1983 FedEx had reached $1 billion in revenue in ten years without ever doing what?

Buying another company: no American business before it had reached $1 billion within a decade on its own growth alone, and FedEx made its first acquisition, the courier Gelco Express, only the following year.