ncerned. In fact, during the fall 1973, the Federal Government began allocating fuel to airlines in order to protect domestic supplies (APO 155). The decline in off-peak-hours service also hit the air freight forwarders hard. The veterans in that industry were fond of saying, “Air freight is basically a night animal; passengers are day animals.” Most air freight items were picked up from shippers in the Perry 5 late afternoon or early evening and taken to the airport for flights leaving after 10 p.m. for overnight delivery to the consignee. Freight forwarders could not use much of the belly space in 747s or DC-10s leaving O’Hare Airport in Chicago at 5 p.m. or Los Angeles International Airport at 6:15 p.m. Service was also cut to many of the smaller regional cities. Some small cities lost half or more of their scheduled flights as airlines made decisions to concentrate their attention on the major metropolitan hubs (APO136). This was the state of the freight industry when Fred Smith took over Arkansas Aviation Sales. With the elimination of passenger service by the major trunk carriers, the difficulty of getting packages and air freight delivered within a day or two after being picked up was escalated. Smith’s Arkansas Aviation Sales was one of the victims of this deteriorating air service. It was causing him problems in operating his firm, so he decided to become an activist to do something about this inefficient distribution system. Smith reflects, “ I became frustrated that I could not receive on any timely and reliable basis, air freight shipments from places around the United States. Sometimes, it might be two days, and sometimes five days, before you could get a part delivered in Little Rock. It was unpredictable.” From that point on he stepped up his research to find a way to close what he called the most classical gap in the transportation systems. He considered what h...
