By Katherine Smith, PhD

The aggressive FedEx online legislative campaign to prevent the passage of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009 is just about everywhere these days.

[Some claim] UPS is resorting to a cynical strategy: If UPS can’t restore parity by making itself more competitive, why not cripple FedEx — with help, of course, from the Teamsters, who want FedEx employees to join their union. After all, everyone knows FedEx Drivers Aren’t Pilots.

FedEx says it’s not fair to bail out UPS just because they are having trouble competing in the overnight delivery market.

Maybe that’s true, but get this, Fred Smith’s www.BrownBailout.com campaign has to be the ultimate hypocrisy.

Why is there a Federal in Federal Express?

Fred, in an interview with Atlanta Bureau Chief Dean Foust, explains:

“For our network, I used as a model the economic activity of the Federal Reserve banking system, because it was in those days a perfect model of the economic activity in the U.S. And that's where the [Federal Express] name came from. It just stuck in my mind. I wanted something that sounded substantial and nationwide, and American Express had already been taken [laughs].”

Well, I guess that’s possible [laughs out loud].

Federal Express, now the FedEx Corporation, has been one of the great entrepreneurial success stories of the past quarter-century — the story of how Smith built FedEx into a $27 billion delivery juggernaut has become a part of Corporate Americana.

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