Federal Express is a company that specializes in rapid overnight delivery of urgent packages. The first company of its type, Federal Express was founded by the youthful Fred Smith in 1971, when he was only 28 years old. Smith had actually developed the idea for the rapid delivery service in a term paper for an economics class when he was a student at Yale University. The term paper didn’t receive a satisfactory grade because the project Smith had outlined was believed to be efficient but too difficult to operate.
    Smith achieved efficiency in his model by designing a system that was separate from the passenger system and could, therefore, focus on how to deliver packages most efficiently. His plan was to have his own planes so that he could create his own schedules and to ship all packages through the centralized hub city of Memphis, a set-up which is similar to the spokes (轮辐) on the wheel of a bicycle. With this combination of his own planes and hub set-up, he could get packages anywhere in the United States overnight.
    What made Smith’s idea difficult to institute was the fact that the entire system had to be created before the company could begin operations. （整个系统得在公司运转以前就建立起来）He needed a fleet of aircraft to collect packages from airports every night and deliver them to Memphis, where they were immediately sorted and flown out to their new destinations; he needed a fleet of trucks to deliver packages to and from the various airports; he needed facilities and trained workers all in place to handle the operation. Smith got $4 million from his father, and he managed to raise an additional 91 million dollars from some investors to get the company operating.