It wasn't FedEx that supplanted railway express but UPS that did this. Railway express was a wonderful service way back when. My parents had salmon fishing water up in Canada, in the Gaspé peninsula. You reached it overnight by a single train rail line from montreal. They sent salmon down to friends in the states by railway express. Each salmon was packed in a pine coffin-like box that was lined with snow that had been preserved in an ice house since the winter. Every 100 miles those boxes were repacked with fresh ice by railway express until they reached their destination. UPS, called United Parcel Service, was a small company that delivered packages from NYC department stores to customers who lived in the suburbs, including Westchester county, Connecticut, and New Jersey. With the development of air travel and the decline of the American rail system, Railway Express began its rapid decline, aided by the sudden expansion of UPS into carrying packages throughout the country.
Eventually, UPS began to use air cargo for its big boxes, too, but relied mostly on its trucks. FedEx came along and had the idea of creating a hub for its business, which for many years was primarily documents, not big boxes. This was established in Memphis. FedEx was much helped by its hub, and by the increasingly poor service provided by the post office. The post office was a victim of politics first: each time a new president entered the White House each and every post office in the country got a new boss, a political hack from the president's political party.
Anyway, the document business was flourishing for FedEx, but was beginning to become mature. So, FedEx management decided to begin to encroach and the box business in which UPS had a monopoly, and it succeeded over time to become a major player.
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