Remembering Frederick W. Smith

Perhaps America's most under-appreciated entrepreneurial hero

Henry Ford. Thomas Edison. Steve Jobs. Bill Gates. Jeff Bezos. Elon Musk.

These are entrepreneurial celebrities in the American experience. They are household names because of their brilliant innovations, because they delivered to ordinary people products and services that changed their lives immensely for the better.

For two decades, in talks I gave at business schools and elsewhere, I asked how many people knew who Fred Smith was. The number of hands was never great and diminished over time.

That’s a shame.

At least I thought so. Fred never did. He wasn’t interested in celebrity.

But what he accomplished was no less epic than the big names we all know. When I speak to young people about the “speed of business” in the 1970s, they are stunned. We are talking about a time within my living memory when not only was the notion of email science fiction, but not even the fax machine had come along. And so the “speed of business” was the speed of the US Postal Service, which was fairly reliable. But not guaranteed. And the expectation for delivery within the United States was two to three days, sometimes longer for greater distances.

Within the last week, one business deal in which I am involved had drafts of documents that were iterated at least five times across 11 time zones in less than 24 hours. One cannot imagine what something like that took to do in 1971 when Fred Smith founded FedEx.

FedEx was the first attempt in two centuries to compete with the US Postal Service. Its promise of guaranteed overnight delivery anywhere in the United States (and later globally) was considered no less science fiction than email at the time. How could you raise the capital for all the planes, trucks, people to make that happen? (A well-known story, perhaps apocryphal, was that he submitted the business plan in school and got a “C” because it was too fanciful.)

But by hook and by crook, he did. And it is worth reading the story of how he did it.

Before going into business, Fred served in the US Marine Corps, including two tours of duty in Vietnam. He was highly decorated for his military service.

I must have told the story 5000 times or more of sitting in a Starbucks in New Jersey in 2004 with my close friend Robbie Diamond, trying to game out if there was room in Washington for a think tank and policy shop on US energy security. When we triangulated around who would best resonate with the issue, we somehow both blurted out the name Fred Smith simultaneously. From his military career, he understood American security. From his business career, he demonstrated brilliance in innovation and execution. And, when we speak about the vulnerabilities presented by oil dependence, who could understand that better than the man whose company used more oil than any organization in the world outside the US military?

When Robbie succeeded in getting an introduction to Fred, this was his reaction: “I’ve always said the two biggest vulnerabilities for the United States are nuclear weapons in the hands of a terrorist organization or regime that engages in terrorism, and the monopoly of oil in transportation.”

How ironic for Fred to pass away on the very day the US uses military action against just such a regime!

Fred became the chairman of SAFE’s Energy Security Leadership Council for the first 16 years of the organization’s existence.

It was Fred’s personal lobbying of President George W. Bush that got several pieces of energy legislation, to a large degree written and promoted by SAFE, signed into law between 2005 and 2008, including the world’s first tax credit for electric vehicles.

Aside from all of his incredible accomplishments, Fred Smith was a mensch - he was warm, wise, generous with absolute integrity, good humor, and a gentle soul. He was the father of 10, and his kids include an award-winning photographer, a film producer, and an NFL head coach. For years, I have said Fred is one of my all-time favorite Americans.

The last time I saw him was at the SAFE Summit in Washington this past April. At that time, I told him that if I could go back in a time machine to 2015, I would have grabbed him by the lapel and begged him to run for US President. He chuckled.

To me, Fred has always been an inspiration and an unsung giant.

At this moment, when America needs more heroes and role models, we could do worse than to emulate Fred Smith’s remarkable service and character.

His legacy is secure in his kids and in the ubiquitous trucks that are seen on the roads of nearly every country in the world every day.

May his memory forever be a blessing.

Watch Fred in conversation with Dr. Daniel Yergin at the SAFE Summit on April 1, 2025.