FedEx founder Fred Smith, who was born in Memphis, Tennesee, and along the way transformed the global parcel shipping industry, died Saturday June 21st.
     The most famous Memphisian was 80 years old.
     “It is with profound sadness and a heavy heart that I share that Frederick W. Smith, our founder and executive chairman, died earlier today,” Chief Executive Officer Raj Subramaniam wrote on the company’s website Saturday June 21.
     This is what Brandon Fried, (right) Executive Director of the U.S.-based Airforwarders Association said about Fred Smith in 2015:
     “The individual I admire most in the air cargo industry,” Brandon declared, "is Fred Smith.
     “Aside from my father, Fred Smith has always been a personal hero as his accomplishments helped to create the market awareness and success our industry enjoys today,” Brandon declared.
     Smith first conceived of his idea to create a hub-and-spoke network to deliver packages overnight by jet aircraft in 1965, while attending Yale University.
     After two tours in Vietnam as a Marine, he convinced investors to back his concept.
     Smith said that he came up with the name Federal Express because he wanted the company to sound big and important, when in fact it was a start-up operation with a future far from assured.
     At the time, Smith was trying to land a major shipping contract with the Federal Reserve Bank that didn't work out.
     But all that aside, on April 17, 1973, fourteen French Dassault Falcon planes took off from Memphis International Airport and delivered 186 packages to twenty-five U.S. cities along the east coast.
     Those first flights not only marked the beginning of FedEx, but also the start of the express industry as a whole.
     Smith revolutionized express delivery and grew his company into a global giant with over 700 aircraft and 500,000 employees today.
     In 2025 FedEx is one of the world’s largest logistics companies with more than $80 billion in annual sales.
     Here is what Fred Smith said about leadership:
     “Leadership is simply the ability of an individual to coalesce the efforts of other individuals toward achieving common goals.
     “It boils down to looking after your people and ensuring that, from top to bottom, everyone feels part of the team.
     “Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves - and by which they are willing to be judged.”
     And about the founding of FedEx 52 years ago?
     “My innovation involved taking an idea from the telecommunications and banking industries, and applying that idea to the transportation business.”
     “I think if you’ve done well in this country, it’s pretty churlish for you not to at least be willing to give a pretty good portion of that back to the public interest."
     Air Cargo legend and TIACA Hall of Famer Bill Boesch (right) recalls some face-to-face time with Fred Smith:
     “The air cargo industry lost a great man on June 21, 2025.
      “But there was always more to Fred than FedEx.
     “He graduated from Yale and served in the Marines during the Vietnam War.
     “Smith did not serve just one tour, but two tours.
     “In my mind the man is a hero.
     “I met Fred in the early days of FedEx when John Emery, Jr. sent me to see him to discuss combining Emery with FedEx. Of course, Fred looked at me like I was crazy.
     “Later when Emery tried to match FedEx by forming its own door-to-door service, unfortunately the effort failed.
     “Recall when I walked into Fred’s office, he had an old-fashioned coat pole hanger with boxing gloves hanging from it.
     “He drove me to lunch in his old car with all of his children’s toys on the backseat.
     “Over the years we both had great and bad times together.
     “I always admired him as one of the few people who were not afraid of going into the unknown.
     “His work forming and keeping Federal Express alive in the early days, and his two tours in Vietnam, not sitting in an office on a base, but actually out in the jungles, for me defined the man.”
    Bob Neff, Sr. V. P. and Director, Seaboard World Airlines (left) remembered his encounter with Fred, “at one time my associates and I spoke with Fred about the possibility of our acquiring his young business, but we decided that our intermodal 20’ containers and his small packages might not be compatible.
     “In the early 1980s, he acquired us! He produced a fabulous, integrated air cargo operation which sets the pace for the industry.
     “Well done, Fred. You are a giant in aviation history!!
     “God bless.” 

     Finally, here a voice from the other side . . . are some Fred Smith first-person memories shared in 2015 from our then 102 year-old editor, the late Richard Malkin, (left) who invented air cargo journalism in 1948 at Cargo Airlift Magazine. He recalls the day, a very young Fred Smith walked into his Manhattan office.
     “It was a number of decades ago—the exact date escapes me—when I received a call from a man with a distinctly out-of-town accent. He had an interesting idea that he would appreciate the opportunity to discuss with me, and he was certain that it was worthy of editorial coverage. Intrigued, I agreed to listen to his plan, and I set a date for a meeting in my Manhattan office.
     “At the appointed time a little after the office staff had left for the day, a young man in pilot’s attire, carrying a flight bag, showed up. I was struck by his good looks and engaging personality. Speaking precisely and in complete sentences, the young man drew a clear picture of a singular airline cargo service that he was sure would revolutionize the industry. His notion of what an efficient air cargo service should be like had undergone many hours of intensive research and study, and he could determine no flaws. Investment seemed to be no problem.
     “I was impressed by what he was telling me. He had a quick and logical answer to every question I put to him. I had been taking notes as the young man spoke, and at the end of his recitation, I congratulated him, wished him the best of luck, and assured him that his grand plan would appear in print. But my heart was not in my words. My inner thoughts were on the huge competition and infighting he would inevitably face.
     “At dinner that evening, I related my experience with the young man to my wife. I expressed profound sadness because he would be swallowed and dumped by competing entities. He was too nice a kid (not to mention the other investors) for this to happen.
     “The young man turned out to be Frederick W. Smith, founder, chairman, president and CEO of Federal Express.”
     Rest in peace Fred . . .
Geoffrey Arend