Wit With Casey's Business Strategy

UPS was founded in 1907 in Seattle, Washington, by 19-year-old Jim Casey as a six-bicycle messenger service called American Messenger Company. He set the future tone of the company by mandating that it be employee-owned. Casey delivered telegraph messages and hot lunches and sometimes took odd jobs to keep his struggling business going. In 1913 Casey merged his company with Evert McCabe's rival firm, Motorcycle Delivery Company, creating Merchants Parcel Delivery. The "fleet" at this point consisted of a few motorcycles and one Model T Ford. In 1915, by which time the fleet had expanded to four cars and five motorcycles, the company began painting its delivery vehicles brown. It was Charlie Soderstrom, one of Casey's partners, who urged that brown be adopted, noting that the color hid dirt well—a fact that had earlier led the Pullman company to paint its railroad cars that same hue.

In 1918 three Seattle department stores hired the service to deliver merchandise to purchasers on the day of the purchase. Department store deliveries remained the center of the firm's business until the late 1940s. In 1919, meantime, Merchants Parcel Delivery made its first move outside its home market, buying a delivery firm in Oakland, California. Because there was a similarly named firm already operating in San Francisco, another name change was in order. The moniker chosen was United Parcel Service. During the 1920s, UPS expanded to Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Portland, Oregon. An expansion drive on the East Coast began in 1930 with the start of delivery service in New York City. UPS moved its headquarters to New York that same