FedEx: 50 facts to mark the 50th anniversary of logistics giant's takeoff in Memphis

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FedEx and Memphis.

The names share only one letter — and Fred Smith certainly can afford to buy that vowel, "E" — but they are now intertwined in innumerable ways.

That story is told, definitively and seriously, by The Commercial Appeal's Omer Yusuf, as the newspaper examines FedEx at 50. But this is not that story.

This is a list, a compendium, a compilation of mostly fun facts about the overnight shipping company that — like such Memphis predecessors as Piggy Wiggly and Elvis Presley — changed the way the world operates and has become synonymous with Memphis.

So here are 50 facts, for FedEx's 50th birthday, culled from the archives of The Commercial Appeal and provided by the FedEx Media Relations team. (Just imagine the words "according to FedEx" next to most of the statistical claims.)

1. Rock-y start: Frederick W. Smith — or Fred Smith, as he is generally known — founded his Federal Express company in Little Rock, Arkansas, incorporating the name in 1971.

2. Hail, Yale: Smith developed the idea for FedEx in a 1965 term paper at Yale University. Smith proposed an air route system specifically for time-sensitive shipments — medicine, computer parts and so on — that didn’t rely on passenger routes. “If a hospital in Texas needs a heart valve tomorrow,” Smith told Memphis Magazine in 1978, “it needs it tomorrow.”

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3. Hub-ba, hub-ba: So why did FedEx decide to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2023, not in 2021? Because the company (not to mention its planes) didn't really take off until 1973, when Smith chose the centrally located and not already overly busy Memphis International Airport as the location for the company's "hub," where arriving packages would be sorted for delivery to their destinations.

4. Marksman: Smith, incidentally, was born Aug. 11, 1944, in Marks, Mississippi, making him arguably the most remarkable man to make a mark out of Marks.

5. Opening night: On its first night of operations — April 17, 1973 — FedEx shipped 186 packages to 25 U.S. cities via 14 Dassault Falcon jets.

6. Famous Falcon: One of those jets, named "Wendy," is now on display in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

7.  Weight gain: FedEx now averages more than 15.5 million packages and 24 million pounds of freight a day.

8. Population explosion: On its historic first night, FedEx had 389 employees. The company now employs more than 530,000 people worldwide.