40th Anniversary
FedEx at 40. What do forty years add up to? Lots of experience, lots of innovation, lots of ambition, lots of commitment, lots of enthusiasm and — lots of growth.
OUR 40TH ANNIVERSARY
40 YEARS DELIVERING A BETTER FUTURE
40 YEARS DELIVERING A BETTER FUTUREOn April 17, 1973, fourteen small French Dassault Falcon planes took to the skies from Memphis International Airport and 186 packages were delivered to 25 U.S. cities along the East Coast: the overnight express industry was born.
Forty years later, our fleet of 660 freighter aircraft along with thousands of FedEx trucks deliver millions of packages and documents to over 220 countries and territories every working day. Today FedEx is providing you with a fully integrated system to ship your packages around the world. In fact, most of the competition has built their business on the hub-and-spoke and track-and-trace models FedEx first introduced.
Our growth, innovation and success over the years is not due to any one contribution but to a great team effort of our 300,000 team members. So here’s to another 40 years - we look forward to continuing building on our success story that first took off from a small airport in Tennessee one memorable evening in spring all those years ago.
MAJOR FEDEX MILESTONES
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40 YEARS OF INNOVATION, EVOLUTION AND GROWTH
| Technology is everywhere — the Internet, mobile devices and social media have all contributed to bringing our world closer together. At FedEx we’ve led the express transportation industry for more than two decades with many significant technological innovations. FedEx was built upon innovation and it continues to be an integral part of the FedEx culture and business strategy. Here are just a few innovation milestones over the past 40 years: |
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1980 Computers in our FedEx vans (DADS) |
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1984 Automated shipping |
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1986 Hand-held bar code scanner for our Couriers |
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1993 Tracking software |
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1994 www.fedex.com |
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1996 Online shipping |
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2002 FedEx® PowerPad |
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2007 Customer service live online chat |
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2009 SenseAwareSM smart tracking launched in the US |
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2010 Electronic Trade Documents FedEx joins Facebook |
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2011 FedEx Ship Manager™ Lite |
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2012 A brand new start for fedex.com EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Indian Subcontinent and Africa) joins Twitter EMEA launches SenseAwareSM |
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DID YOU KNOW?
FedEx is not just a remarkable business story. It’s a mosaic of captivating moments and unique events. Here are a few of the most memorable events and shipments over the years.
Four-legged freight:
1 unique table (it was Vincent van Gogh’s)
4 giant pandas
1 white tiger
45 show horses
1 hippopotamus
Unusual cargo:
World War II tanks
90 tons of parts of the Titanic
Priceless paintings by Goya, El Greco and Murillo
Madonna’s hair wigs for her concert
Jaws, the star of the famous film
504,000 bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau
The U.S. Paralympic Sailing Team yacht
A windmill from Denmark
An eight-ton statue of Filipino war hero Dr. Jose P. Rizal
A three-ton chocolate replica of Notre-Dame Cathedral
FedEx Cares. Our culture of community service and environmental initiatives distinguishes FedEx and has made a difference in millions of lives around the world. Here are a few ways we lend support to help deliver a better world:
100s of tons of aid relief donated to countries in need
1000s of trees planted across Europe
6,000+ volunteer hours
17,000+ sq. meters of solar panels
1,000,000s of euros donated to various non-governmental organisations