Fred Smith
Fred Smith, Chairman and CEO of Federal Express Corporation, is known as the "father of the overnight delivery business." A Marine Corps veteran who once teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, he is one of American business's greatest success stories. As an undergraduate at Yale, Fred Smith wrote a paper on the need for reliable overnight delivery in a computerized information age. His professor found the premise improbable, and as Smith recalls, he only received a grade of C for this effort, but the idea remained with him. After graduation, Smith enlisted in the Marine Corps and served two tours of duty in Vietnam. While in the military, the young lieutenant observed military procurement and delivery procedures carefully, with an eye toward someday realizing his dream of a vast network dedicated to overnight commercial delivery. Smith got his chance when he left the service and started his express transport business in 1971. "I wanted to do something productive after blowing so many th