{"id":1595,"date":"2010-06-29T00:42:26","date_gmt":"2010-06-29T07:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=1595"},"modified":"2013-06-21T00:27:44","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T07:27:44","slug":"ups-was-founded-by-two-teenagers-with-one-bicycle-and-100-borrowed-from-a-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/ups-was-founded-by-two-teenagers-with-one-bicycle-and-100-borrowed-from-a-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"UPS Was Founded By Two Teenagers With One Bicycle and $100 Borrowed from a Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cardboard-boxes\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> UPS was started by two teenagers with one bicycle and $100 borrowed from a friend.<\/p>\n

The date was August 28, 1907 and the two kids were 18 year old Claude Ryan and 19 year old Jim Casey.\u00a0 The two had one bike between them and $100 (about $2400 today) borrowed from a friend to found the “American Messenger Company” in Seattle, Washington.\u00a0 The company was initially run in a hotel basement at Second Avenue and Main Street in Seattle.<\/p>\n

At that time, most people didn’t own phones, so sending telegrams was a frequent thing.\u00a0 These had to be hand delivered.\u00a0 In the beginning, the company primarily delivered these telegrams, but eventually expanded into transporting pretty much anything that could be transported on a bicycle or on foot.\u00a0 Casey and Ryan manned the phone while Casey’s brother George and a handful of other teenagers went out making deliveries.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward a few years and Casey and Ryan had merged their company with rival Merchant’s Parcel Delivery taking the latter’s name.\u00a0 In the process, they acquired a few motorcycles and delivery cars with their first car being a Ford Model T.\u00a0\u00a0 At this time, more and more people had telephones so Casey and Ryan switched to working with retail stores to deliver customers purchases to their homes.<\/p>\n

By the time Casey retired from UPS in 1962, the company had grown to operating in 31 U.S. states with annual revenue around $550 million and about 22,000 workers.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2013 and Casey and Ryan’s company that started so humbly is now worth approximately $80 billion with annual revenue at over $50 billion; employing just under half a million workers in 200 countries; delivering over 3.8 billion packages and documents a year.\u00a0 Amazing what $100, some elbow grease, and a bit of ingenuity can do.<\/p>\n

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