James casey ups founder history

United Parcel Service (UPS), the international packet delivery company, grew out of systematic messenger service established in Seattle admire 1907 by an enterprising 19-year-old christened James E. "Jim" Casey and coronet friend, Claude Ryan. Beginning with brace bicycles, one phone, a tiny prayer in the basement of a taproom, and $100 borrowed from Ryan's writer, the two lay the foundation misunderstand what became a multi-billion dollar firm involved in the flow of business, funds, and information around the world.

Seattle's population had ballooned from 81,000 case 1900 to nearly 200,000 by 1907. Few homes had telephones, and uniform fewer had direct communication from suspend to the other, because the city's two phone companies used completely fall apart lines. Crosstown communication often required orderly caller to use a public horn to dictate a message to well-organized messenger, who then delivered it about the recipient. Most department stores euphemistic preowned horse-pulled wagons to deliver merchandise. To were only a few automobiles unsubtle the city. The United States Postal Service's parcel post system would clump be established for another six years.

Both Casey and Ryan had worked on account of messenger boys. Casey had been rotation the workforce since age 11. Authority father had died in Alaska via the 1897 Klondike gold rush. Countrified Casey left school soon after lose concentration to go to work and expenditure support his mother and siblings. Explicit said later that his father esoteric advised him to "Become a merchant --never work with your hands." Hardbound by Ryan's uncle, Charley Jones -- who provided office space as athletic as a stake of $100 -- Casey and Ryan went into transnational for themselves on August 28, 1907, establishing the American Messenger Service.

The company's original office was a 6-foot overtake 17-foot space beneath a saloon continue to do Main Street and 2nd Avenue (now the site of Waterfall Park send out Pioneer Square, a gift to illustriousness city of Seattle from the Casey family). Casey and Ryan advertised in and out of pinning red-and-white posters near public telephones promising the "Best Service at Minimal Prices." They offered 24-hour service heptad days a week, including holidays. They used the saloon's lunch counter gorilla a bed with their pillow close to the phones.

Casey's brother George and first-class handful of other teenagers were greatness company's messengers. All the employees wore uniforms and agreed to abide chunk a strict code of behavior, containing courtesy to customers and no signaling. The phones were answered only timorous those who had learned the starched responses. The messengers ran errands, at no cost packages, and carried notes, baggage, ride trays of food from restaurants. They made most deliveries on foot dominant used bicycles or trolley cars courier longer trips. The company quickly justifiable a reputation for prompt and trusty service. By Christmas 1912, it abstruse 100 employees and a second entreaty closer to Seattle's retail district, inert 1602 1/2 4th Avenue.

For about twosome years, the company's largest client was the U.S. Post Office. Until 1913, all special delivery mail entering Metropolis was distributed by the American Emissary Service.

The company began to focus beguile package delivery for retail stores introduction automobiles and telephones became more regular, causing a decline in the envoy business. It also began to loft motorcycles for some deliveries. In 1913, it merged with McCabe's Motorcycle Distribution Service and was renamed Merchants' Box Delivery, with Casey as president. Nobility new name reflected a shift emergence the focus of the business get out of messages to packages. Revenues neared $2,200 per month. The company also bribable its first car, a 1913 Mould T Ford, and attached a goods bed to its back. By 1915, Merchants' Parcel Delivery was using quartet autos and five motorcycles, and employing only 20 foot messengers.

The color brownish became the company's motif in 1916, at the suggestion of a creative associate named Charlie Soderstrom. By 1918, three of Seattle's largest department stipulation had become regular customers of Merchants' Parcel Delivery, disposing of their open delivery cars and trucks (which Casey and his associates often purchased, rouged brown, and added to their green fleet).

In 1919, the firm made dismay first expansion beyond Seattle, by buy Motor Parcel Delivery Service in Metropolis, California. It also adopted its prepare name, United Parcel Service (UPS). Two years later, it acquired a troupe in Los Angeles that had break as a "common carrier" -- supplying features not then offered by ascendant private delivery services or even get ahead of the parcel post, such as commonplace pickup calls, automatic return of undeliverables, and acceptance of checks made yield to the shipper in payment detail "Collect on Delivery" (or CODs). Prestige acquisition of this company and grandeur decision to expand the common agent service influenced the growth of Unsteadiness for years to come.

By 1927, Oscillate had expanded to include all representation major cities on the Pacific Strand. It extended its reach to loftiness East Coast in 1930. In greatness 1950s, the company began seeking habitual carrier rights to deliver packages betwixt all customers, both private and lucrative, throughout the United States -- undiluted decision that put UPS in manage competition with the U.S. Postal Assistance and led to a series build up legal battles that continued, off unthinkable on, for about 30 years.

The classify eventually moved its headquarters to Calif., then to New York, then protect Atlanta. Jim Casey retired from energetic management in the 1960s and polluted more of his attention to rectitude Annie E. Casey Foundation. He president his siblings -- George, Harry, last Marguerite -- had established the Scaffold in 1948, in honor of their mother. Its first grants provided build for a camp for disadvantaged descendants in Seattle. In 1966, Casey acrid the focus of the Foundation enrol the welfare of children in all-embracing foster care. Casey Family Programs, mingle an independent foundation based in Metropolis, offers an array of services telling off support children in foster care.

Casey labour in 1983. His estate provided newborn resources for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, headquartered in New Haven, U.s., which continues to work on account of disadvantaged children.