#192 Jim Casey (Founder of UPS)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. UPS was half a century old in 1957 In June of that year, I was a 17-year-old Californian right out of high school and had already secured morning employment. Still, I complained to a neighbor who always wore a brown uniform that it needed an afternoon job too.
Why don't you go down to United Parcel? They always need guys to load and unload in the afternoons.
So in June, I became a UPSer, even though I wouldn't be 18 until July.
Close enough, they said, and I was assigned to load a trailer in downtown Los Angeles, starting at $1.62 an hour. In August, the company gave us free cake and pamphlets commemorating the company's 50th anniversary. In December, we moved into a new state-of-the-art facility next door where men in suits were always around checking things out. Another UPSer gave me the heads up that one of them was company founder Jim Casey. From the very beginning, I had heard stories about the company's tireless founder. He was a living legend. Jim Casey, the son of Irish immigrants, working from the age of 11 to support a family of five.
In 1907, in a basement beneath a bar, he conceived the American Messenger Company, which eventually became UPS.
I drove for UPS for five years and two weeks, and then in 1966, I entered management.
All the stories I heard about the company's origins and history took on a new clarity as I met and got closer to the great men who were leading UPS.
Great men, including Jim Casey. Though retired, he was still a presence.
I was fortunate enough to meet him on numerous occasions.
His unwavering insistence on strong values kept UPS and its employees on course.
Much later, when I was finishing my career at UPS in the 1990s, books about big American companies and the legendary American entrepreneurs were coming out in droves.
Yet the story of our incredible company remained untold. UPS, Big Brown, was by then well known and yet a mystery.
Big Brown, The Untold Story of UPS, will be the first business biography written regarding this elusive yet highly successful corporation.
I'm proud of these pages. An epic snapshot of American business and culture over the past hundred years.
You'll read how UPS grew on the heels of the robber barons and the Wild West gold rush euphoria by providing delivery service for department stores. Then how it evolved into a common carrier. Led by determined men, the company expanded against the background of the roaring 20s, the depression, and the rise of the labor movement. Jim Casey remains the center of the UPS universe.
And that was an excerpt from the book I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Big Brown, The Untold Story of UPS, and is written by Greg Niemann. And I wanna thank a misfit named Christina. She's the one that turned me onto this book. I didn't even know it existed. All the way back on Founders number 151, I covered the biography on Fred Smith, who actually founded FedEx. And that book was undoubtedly one of the craziest founding stories I've ever heard. Let me read, I'm gonna tell you how it ties into why I wanted to study UPS, because these giant physical logistics companies are unbelievably difficult to build. And we'll go into that.
Jim, it took Jim almost 60 years to actually finally achieve his vision of nationwide delivery. So this is from, again, this is Founders number 151 The book is called Overnight Success, Federal Express and Frederick Smith. It's running with Create Creator and it has one of the craziest opening paragraphs of any book I've ever read. And I'm going to read to you right now. At the age 30, Frederick Wallace Smith was in deep trouble. His dream of creating Federal Express had become too expensive and was fast fizzling out. He had exhausted his father's Greyhound bus millions. He was in hawk for 15 or 20 million more. He appeared in danger of losing his cargo jet planes and also his wife.