This story is part of the Iconic Brands series, a USA TODAY Network project showcasing the companies and brands that helped shape the nation's identity, economy and culture. The series celebrates American ingenuity with a deeply reported examination of how brands intersect with history, community and everyday life in celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary.
FedEx executive Richard W. Smith said he and his late father, FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith, were fond of quoting “Locksley Hall,” a poem published in 1842 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The poem contains this passage:
“Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales…”
Smith said the poem is a sort of “prophecy” because “it literally describes what FedEx does — pilots in purple twilight, dropping down bales.”
The 5,100 pilots who fly FedEx's 700 aircraft are arguably the most glamorous representatives of the company’s 500,000-member workforce, a cohort that includes truck drivers, couriers, sorters, trackers and others, all working to ensure the daily delivery of close to 17 million "bales" — packages and other shipments — around the world.
The goal of this nonstop activity and the groundbreaking logistics and technology that support it is embodied in the company catchphrase, introduced in 1979: Absolutely, positively overnight.
Memphis-based FedExoffers a service, not a product. Yet that iconic slogan may be as recognizable as the stylized script on a bottle of Coca-Cola or the golden arches above a hamburger restaurant.
The slogan is an affirmation of the FedEx mission. It’s a promise to the company's customers and a commitment to a classically American emphasis: efficiency plus speed.
Achieving this mission produced another sort of “prophecy" — "a new way of thinking," in the words of one of the company's innovators.
In revolutionizing delivery and tracking, FedEx not only changed the way the world does business but created expectations for the instantaneous communication, the borderless community and the shop-with-a-click commerce that characterize the age of the internet.
That's why — sorry, Elvis fans — Smith “was the most influential person in Memphis history," according to fellow Memphis business leader Pitt Hyde, the founder of AutoZone.
"He did nothing less than invent global commerce," Hyde said. "He didn’t just change Memphis, he changed the world."
"If you list American innovators, going back to Edison, he's in there," said tech educator Madan Birla, whose books include "FedEx Delivers," subtitled: "How the World's Leading Shipping Company Keeps Innovating and Outperforming the Competition."
The 'peace-of-mind business'
Founded by Fred Smith in 1971 with ideas he nurtured at Yale University business school and — crucially — in Vietnam, where he flew combat missions with the Marines, FedEx “literally created a new way of doing business and thinking,” said Birla, the former longtime operations and planning manager for FedEx, who helped design many of the company’s logistical and supply-chain management innovations.
Richard W. Smithsaid the FedEx network — with its real-time tracking and its hub-and-spoke design — represented "a feat of industrial engineering" as significant as the aqueduct system that delivered water in ancient Rome.
Some might cite the internet as a greater network achievement. But because FedEx delivers "atoms" (physical material), "what we do is actually more complex and difficult" than the delivery of information in the digital realm, Smith said.
"In my estimation, my father was the greatest network builder of the modern age because before him none of this existed," Smith said. "There was no express industry, there was no tracking systems, we built those from scratch."
Birla agreed, but added that the company owes its success to delivering something less tangible than atoms.
“Fred Smith said to us that we are not in the transportation business, even though we have planes and trucks,” Birla remembered. “He said we are in the peace-of-mind business.
“Why would people give us a package and pay $20 to ship it instead of $5 to the post office?” Birla asked. “Because when the package is with FedEx, a person can go to bed at night with the peace of mind that it will be where it needs to be in the morning.”
That “peace of mind” has inspired essential, notable and newsworthy shipments as well as less consequential deliveries.
FedEx planes broughtgiant pandasto the U.S., and delivered thefirst doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
A longtime NFL partner,FedEx delivers the Vince Lombardi Trophyfrom the football league’s New York headquarters to the Super Bowl.
In 1987, FedEx delivered a 4-ton drill and 5,700 pounds of equipment to Midland, Texas, for use in the rescue of 18-month-old "Baby Jessica" (Jessica McClure), who had fallen down a well in her aunt's backyard.
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Such examples could fill a book— or a library.
By 1994, the company originally known as Federal Express was so successful that it officially shortened its name, adopting the commonly used contraction that was had become as much a verb as a noun: FedEx.
The company is now valued at more than $83 billion.
'Sky' hopes
Smith first laid out his plan for an air system for time-sensitive shipments that didn't rely on passenger routes in a 1965 term paper at Yale (where he was afraternity member with future U.S. president George W. Bush).
A possible motivation for Smith's passion for swift movement and speedy transportation was his struggle with Legg-Calvé-Perthes syndrome, a potentially crippling disorder. As a child, Smith used crutches and leg braces.
In addition, the business of transportation — of movement — was, essentially, in his blood. Smith's grandfather had been a steamboat captain, while his father was a garage mechanic turned businessman who built a multi-state bus line.
Originally, Smith's overnight-delivery idea was to be applied to urgent deliveries. "If a hospital in Texas needs a heart valve tomorrow, it needs it tomorrow," he said, years later, explaining the idea to Memphis Magazine.
Smith incorporated Federal Express in 1971 in Little Rock, then moved the company to the hospitable and more centrally located Memphis International Airport. (The airport is in the process of being renamedFrederick W. Smith International Airport.)
As Sean J. Lopez writes in his book "Airborne Dreams: Fred Smith, FedEx, and the Bold Gamble That Transformed Logistics Forever," published in 2025: "Fred Smith had an idea so bold it defied logic: a company that could move packages overnight, guaranteed. Banks laughed. Experts dismissed it. Rivals called it madness."
"Federal Express Has 'Sky' Hopes in Memphis" was the bemused headline in The Commercial Appeal, part of the USA TODAY Network. The story reported that "jet- and computer-age technology" would enable "the world's only small-package airline" to implement "an innovative package delivery system" out of the Memphis airport "central sorting facility." Packages flown to Memphis would then be shipped to their ultimate destination.
Federal Express first took flight, in more ways than one, on April 17, 1973, when 14 small planes left Memphis and delivered 186 packages to 25 U.S. cities. One of those Dassault Falcon jets, named "Wendy," is now on display in theSmithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Today, FedEx — or, more formally, FedEx Corporation — processes about 2 million shipments a day at itsMemphis hub.
Eventually, the Memphis hub expanded into a sort of "super hub." AsThe Commercial Appeal reported in 2021: "Nowadays, the FedEx Express World Hub can handle up to 484,000 documents and packages per hour. The parcels snake through a labyrinth of belts before being loaded on aircraft and shipped to their next destination."
The expansion benefited the city as well as the company: With some 30,000 local workers, FedEx is Memphis' largest employer.
The World Hub is augmented by a multitiered support network that includes additional seven major U.S. air hubs and hundreds of additional stations in North America.
Crucially, FedEx developed a system using bar codes and other types of scanning and reporting technology that enable the company to track a package at any stage of its journey. In 2025, the company introduced FedEx Surround, an artificial intelligence-powered monitoring system that uses Bluetooth sensors to track shipments with greater precision.
'They can trust FedEx'
Bluetooth, sure; but Birla said the human element in the FedEx network remains decisive.
He explained: "We can design a system that says a plane will arrive at 6 a.m. at JFK Airport in New York. But on a given day there will be snow. It is the people who say, ‘Hey, I’m going to make sure this is delivered on time today.'’' As a result, "The customers have loyalty to FedEx because they can trust FedEx.”
In fact, in the days when paychecks were mailed to employees, this emphasis on customer service became a motto. A message printed on paycheck stubs read: “A Satisfied Customer Made It Possible.”
Fred Smith's belief that customer satisfaction is key continues to motivate the decisions of his successors (includingRaj Subramaniam, CEO since 2022). After the Supreme Court ruled in February that President Trump could not impose tariffs under the International Emergency Powers Act, the company said it would distribute any refunds it receives to customers.
"If refunds are issued to FedEx, we will issue refunds to the shippers and consumers who originally bore those charges,” FedEx said in a statement.
Fred Smith died on June 21, 2025, at the age of 80. In August,a public “Celebration of Life” was heldin his honor at FedExForum, the Downtown Memphis basketball and event arena that Smith’s sponsorship helped fund.
Thousands attended, some wearing FedEx gear, as if the company were a sports team. U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and former Secretary of State John Kerry were there. Morgan Freeman and Tom Hanks — who played a FedEx systems analyst in "Cast Away" —contributed video tributes.
Theoutpouring of praise and affectionwere testimony to the company's "good citizen" status, as an investor and supporter of public works and initiatives, in Memphis and elsewhere — and in many different fields. A prominent example is the FedEx Cup, a playoff system PGA championship trophy introduced to professional golf in 2007.
"I figure we can give the man a few hours of our day,” said Jackie Hardy, a 33-year FedEx veteran "team member" — as employees are known — who attended the memorial wearing a T-shirt with the words "Final Flight" emblazoned above a portrait of Fred Smith. “He did so much not just for us personally but for the city.”
How the list was chosen
The Iconic Brands 50 identifies American companies that most profoundly shaped the nation’s identity, economy and culture. Selection emphasized historical significance, industry-building innovation, measurable economic influence and lasting cultural impact. Brands were chosen for transforming daily life or becoming enduring symbols of American values. Long-term relevance and sustained national influence carried greater weight than short-term financial performance or recent popularity.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal:The rise of FedEx as an iconic American brand
This story is part of the Iconic Brands series, a USA TODAY Network project showcasing the companies and brands that helped shape the n...
