Marshall Award for his success in building FedEx from scratch. Most of his earnings come from being the chairman and president of FedEx, the largest overnight express delivery company in the world. Fred Smith is the American businessman who came up with the idea of air freight and founded FedEx. Although the company had to battle several issues in the first two years of its operation, Smith stood by his employees, through thick and thin. He is thus, precisely what a leader should be — ethical, principled, humble, organized, and empathetic.
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Get help. Wealthy Persons. Fred Smith. Arthur Smith is not a writer and actor! Even though the company's international traffic had grown to include over planes flying out of three hubs, Europe as a whole was slow to develop as an express market. In the company changed its name to FedEx. That same year Smith, sensing the importance of the Internet and trying to recuperate from losses in his international division, introduced InterNetShip, a service that allowed customers to coordinate their domestic deliveries via Internet-linked computer software.
Smith also developed BusinessLink, a marketing service that provided businesses with an online catalogue of their goods directly linked to FedEx. Despite financial setbacks, the company continued to grow. By FedEx employed , employees worldwide; delivered an average of 2. In FedEx formed the FDX Company, which served as a holding company that oversaw both domestic and international operations of the organization. Despite intense competition and financial setbacks, Smith continued to persevere.
His success came in part because of his ability to understand the changing needs of business and the importance of such things as the Internet, deregulated trade, and changing business practices.
But Smith found that he had to wait for American and European business owners to understand his vision of a delivery system that promised savings, increased productivity, and improved efficiency. Smith also saw the possibilities with the Internet and the growing potential of e-commerce for the shipping industry. In speeches and interviews Smith also acknowledged that the business of doing business was rapidly changing as the 20th century came to a close.
With the increased availability of express shipping, Smith foresaw a trend in which companies would reduce their inventory as they became more dependent on express shipments.
This development would in turn make the intermediary warehousing and distribution facilities less necessary. Smith pushed for the United States in cooperation with other countries, such as Japan, to work on fashioning a model of such a network that other countries could follow.
Smith continued to increase his hold on the express delivery market. With the purchase of the company, all 1, Kinko's locations worldwide offered FedEx shipping services and increased FedEx's share of the express document and delivery business, helping FedEx to build an even larger customer base.
In the company changed names once more to the FedEx Corporation. Once again, though, the company stumbled. In streamlining company operations, Smith decided to let various divisions of FedEx operate more independently. In April it was discovered that a number of FedEx drivers and couriers had been using company vehicles to deliver more than tons of marijuana in a delivery system that went back and forth between the East Coast and the West Coast.
Certainly one of Smith's most resounding successes was in the creation of a corporate culture that inspired an intense loyalty to the company and its founder. Smith operated his company on a basic premise that he called P-S-P: people, service, profit.
The idea was that the three concepts work in a circle, each supported by the others. From the company's earliest beginnings, Smith strove to provide for his workers, even when times were tough.
Even when money was tight, Smith made sure that his employees were given medical coverage. A position with FedEx remained one of the most sought-after jobs in the Memphis area, partly because of the generous wages, overtime, and benefits the company offered its employees.
Smith acknowledged the importance of his workers. For instance, during the s, when UPS workers went on strike, thousands of FedEx employees worked numerous hours to process the additional , packages that flooded into FedEx centers. Smith rewarded his employees with special bonuses while taking out full-page newspaper ads to thank them for their hard work. By all accounts, Smith was a boss who worked hard at being accessible to his employees.
He was known to visit the Memphis site late at night, greeting many of the employees by name. He also offered a standing invitation to any employee with 10 years of service to come to Memphis for breakfast with the boss. Although gregarious by nature, Smith tended to stay out of the limelight; when necessary, however, he showed that he was capable of impassioned and thoughtful analysis on the state of business in America and the world. A true believer in the advent of the global economy, Smith saw the future with the creation of Federal Express; his risk-taking set the standard by which other companies were often forced to measure themselves.
Unafraid of new technology, Smith instead saw it as a challenge to be mastered, implemented, and used as means of furthering the global community. By following this philosophy, FedEx continued to shape the very face of global communications. Smith," Strategy and Leadership , September-October , pp. Linden, Eugene, "Frederick W. Tucker, Robert B. Toggle navigation. Other articles you might like:. He was formerly chairman of the Board of Governors for the International Air Transport Association and chaired the executive committee of the U.
Air Transport Association. Smith has received several honorary degrees and numerous civic, academic, and business awards including the Global Leadership Award from the U.
He served as co-chairman of both the U.
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