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FedEx founder Fred Smith, one of the most influential figures in the development of modern logistics, died on Saturday, the company has announced.
Smith, who was 80, stepped down as chief executive of the company only in 2022 and was still executive chair of the company he founded in 1973 with a fleet of 14 Dassault Falcon 20 jets.
The idea for the service — widely replicated by other operators worldwide since — had started as a paper in Smith’s economics degree at Yale, where it was graded poorly by an academic who regarded it as unfeasible.
By the time of Smith’s death, the company was operating 698 aircraft and shipping an average of more than 16mn packages daily.
In a letter posted on the company’s website late on Saturday, Smith’s successor as chief executive, Raj Subramaniam, wrote that he was announcing the death with “profound sadness and a heavy heart”.
Smith’s key insight was to understand that there was a market for a premium delivery service for express packages that customers wanted to be sure would arrive at their destination next morning. He put at the heart of the service a national hub for the United States in Memphis, Tennessee, which remains the busiest hub in the company’s now international operations.
The system has been widely imitated by other delivery services, including UPS, which set up a similar hub at Louisville, Kentucky, in 1980.
Comprehensive, express delivery services such as FedEx’s have become a critical part of the global economy in the last 25 years as ecommerce has driven huge rises in volumes and demand.
The company has grown to encompass not only the flagship express parcels business but also a range of freight forwarding and logistics services, worldwide.
The company, however, came close to running out of cash in 1975, shortly after its founding. Smith is said to have taken some of the company’s last few thousand dollars to Las Vegas and rescued it by winning $27,000 at blackjack — enough to pay a looming fuel bill.
Subramaniam wrote in his letter that Smith was “more than just the pioneer of an industry” and the founder of the company.
“He was the heart and soul of FedEx,” Subramanian wrote.
FedEx last month announced it had signed a deal to deliver select large packages for Amazon, the ecommerce giant, six years after Smith severed ties in protest at Amazon’s decision to build its own logistics network.
Smith regarded as one of the key experiences of his life the three years he served in the US Marine Corps after Yale, including two tours of duty in the Vietnam war, where he won two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for his bravery.
In an address at Yale in 2006, Smith said the leadership taught by the military was “the best”.
Subramaniam’s letter said Smith was “a mentor to many and a source of inspiration to all”.
“He was also a proud father, grandfather, husband, Marine, and friend,” he wrote.
Smith was a noted enthusiast for free markets and globalisation and attributed the company’s success in recent decades partly to its decision to enter Asian markets such as China earlier than other large US corporations.
Paul Young, mayor of Memphis, said that Smith was “a visionary whose ideas reshaped . . . the global economy”.
“When he founded FedEx, he didn’t just launch a company; he changed the way the world moves,” Young said.
Additional reporting by Kana Inagaki