FedEx founder Fred Smith: An "overnight" success

it started with a revolutionary idea  shipping packages overnight 50 years   later you might say FedEx delivers David  Martin catches up with its founder Fred Smith once you see it you will never again  take overnight delivery for granted   the Sorting Center at FedEx headquarters in  Memphis elbow grease and computerized conveyor   belts routing packages around the world the Fred  Smith well I am here's the man behind it all yeah   good to see you good to see you Fred Smith founded  the company that revolutionized business 50 years   ago I expected you somewhere to be following your  planes around the world well I can I've got a map   right there and I can pull it up there they are  heading across the Pacific is that what it looks   like every day yeah we serve 220 countries around  the world today FedEx employs more than 530 000   people and moves 15 million packages a day aboard  a fleet of 700 airplanes including the wide-bodied   Boeing triple seven so how many of these guys  do you own we have 59 either on hand or on order   the engine of a triple seven would not fit  inside the cargo hold of his first plane   now on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space  Museum it is the flagship of the air express   industry Smith created to meet the needs of the  coming Information Age your computer goes down you   have to have the part to fix it or you're out of  business that's the whole principle of FedEx yeah   Smith saw the future when he was still an  undergraduate at Yale Moonlighting is a charter   Pilot Flying computer parts what I was looking at  was the first stages of automation of our society   moving to a computer based society it was just  the recognition Society was automating did it   feel like an aha moment to you at the time well  I suppose that would be a good way to describe   it but first there was Vietnam two combat tours  a silver star bronze star and two purple hearts   looking around here it looks a little more  military than it does FedEx people don't   come back here very often so I guess this is more  personal in the front office is there this is you   in the Marines that's me and uh we're not platoon  leaders two of them didn't come back Smith Rose to   the rank of Captain and came home a changed  man the Vietnam experience was the defining   um part of my life everything I ever accomplished  in business is mostly what I learned in the Marine   Corps particularly about leading people are you  still Captain Smith he comes out every once in   a while if necessary I found out only in the last  three years that all my children called me behind   my back Stalin I didn't know that so I'm sure  there were a couple of disciplinary episodes there so we saw some of your front line troops at the  shorting Center oh did you your vast Network   couldn't function without them absolutely how  do you reward them well the most important way   we reward them as a good pay and benefit so if  you work for us we'll put you through college   but I thought those were part-time workers well  they are but they still get medical benefits and   tuition refund okay fly safe say Fred around here  and everybody knows who you're talking about well   you hadn't hardly aged at all right it's because  of you Audrey Phifer went to work for him in year   one thank you Fred came to this computer training  school I was had began taking he came himself and   talked about his dream and it was so vivid and so  real that I said went the next day and got hired   on the spot what year did you start delivering  we started uh April 17th 50 years ago I think we   had a 189 pieces that day did you deliver all of  those packages overnight oh 100 yeah it was pretty   pretty easy when they were only 189. in the first  three years the company lost 29 million dollars   so there's stories uh from the early days where  he had to ask employees not to cash their paycheck   yes I was one of them you know it happened a  couple of times that we had to hold our checks   but his Hub and spoke system planes flying  into a central location and back out to their   final destination proved overnight delivery  was possible it was just stunning to people   that you could do that within months there was  a tenfold increase in the number of packages   keeping track of them became the next hurdle the  problem was that there was no technology that   did that this was the solution a small scanning  device he calls the super tracker and you scan the   package upon delivery or pun pickup transmitted  the information back into our computer system   the barcodes on the outside of the package  became as important as what was inside that   flashing blue light scans those codes and tells  the conveyor belt where to drop off the packages   so it changed Logistics forever on the night we  visited the Memphis Hub planes were landing at one   minute intervals it's one met by a team of cargo  handlers how long does it take to unload a plane   like this we're doing really well probably about  35-40 minutes Joshua Rhodes is the team leader   there are days where it can be a little  stressful but I mean that's every drop   you feel like you're always working against  the clock but I mean that is the life of FedEx crunch time the FedEx life came to the  big screen in the person of Tom Hanks   much time we have who played a Time  obsessed manager in the movie Cast Away   oh wait a minute Wilson Wilson that's  Wilson all right a replica of Wilson   you still awake Wilson thanks best and  only friend marooned on a desert island   they may never find us [Music] I'll be right  back the FedEx brand name was everywhere but   the plot at public relations disaster written  all over when I told our senior VP of marketing   that I'd agreed to let a FedEx plane be crashed  with Tom Hanks in and he almost uh passed out   it became what Smith calls a 100 million dollar  infomercial for a company that is always racing   the clock those packages yeah you don't want  them to sit there because it's just idle cost   within hours of Landing the planes are loaded  and ready to take off again in the control   tower Al Coleman needs to get each one Airborne  within 15 minutes of pushing back from the gate   we like burning our fuel in flight and  not taxing is there a difference between   controlling cargo planes and passenger planes no  sir the only difference is packages don't complain   that much was true before Fred Smith he came along and changed everything else

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 149,003

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, fred smith, fedex, federal express, 1973, packages, overnight shipping, memphis, david martin, marine, captain, vietnam, veteran

Id: xrLN7xcx67g

Length: 7min 55sec (475 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023