August 28
UPS DAY
It isn’t often that entrepreneur teenagers develop small businesses into corporate giants. But that’s what happened on this day in 1907 in Seattle when nineteen-year-old Jim Casey borrowed $100 from his friend, Claude Ryan, and started a local delivery service. They called it the American Messenger Company. Jim’s slogan was, “Best service, and lowest rates.” The company did well because Jim and Claude stuck to their principles: round-the-clock customer service, courtesy, reliability and low rates.
They took these concepts a few steps further, focusing on package delivery for local retail stores, merging in 1913 with Mac McCabe and forming Merchants Parcel Delivery. The company was the first to provide consolidated delivery, placing packages with similar street destinations on one delivery truck. The company’s growing fleet of trucks was then managed by Charlie Soderstrom. Charlie selected the dark brown color because of its professional appearance.
By the 1920s, the company had grown large enough to expand to Oakland and Los Angeles, California. It wasn’t long before it became known as United Parcel Service; ‘united’ for the consolidated shipments and ‘service’ because that’s what they offered. Today, United Parcel Service “operates an international small package and document network in more than 200 countries and territories, spanning both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. With its international service, UPS can reach over four billion people.”
So give that package to the UPS man in the Buster Brown truck. (Truck drivers refer to the UPS trucks as Buster Brown when chatting on the CB.)
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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