The truth about how UPS got started - Grunge
Seattle has always been a city of industry and innovation, something that teenagers Jim Casey and Claude Ryan knew all too well. In 1907 they borrowed $100 from an acquaintance and founded the American Messenger Company. This modest courier service may have got its start in a subterranean office in the Pacific Northwest, but by the end of the century it had morphed into the shipping giant we know today as the United Parcel Service, or UPS.
In the early days the company was mostly delivering messages to and from businesses, and even specialty mail thanks to one of its biggest clients, the United States Post Office. Deliveries were mostly done on foot, and occasionally by bicycle. The company grew in the 1910s by investing in its first delivery vehicle: a Model T Ford. It was around this time that commercial package delivery became the norm, and in 1919, after expanding to Oakland, California, they started using the name United Parcel Service.
Seattle has always been a city of industry and innovation, something that teenagers Jim Casey and Claude Ryan knew all too well. In 1907 they borrowed $100 from an acquaintance and founded the American Messenger Company. This modest courier service may have got its start in a subterranean office in the Pacific Northwest, but by the end of the century it had morphed into the shipping giant we know today as the United Parcel Service, or UPS.
In the early days the company was mostly delivering messages to and from businesses, and even specialty mail thanks to one of its biggest clients, the United States Post Office. Deliveries were mostly done on foot, and occasionally by bicycle. The company grew in the 1910s by investing in its first delivery vehicle: a Model T Ford. It was around this time that commercial package delivery became the norm, and in 1919, after expanding to Oakland, California, they started using the name United Parcel Service.
