Fred Smith

It was the future.

And he'd risk every dollar to prove it.

When Fred Smith returned from Vietnam in July of 1969, he didn't go straight into building FedEx.

First, he went to Little Rock to clean up his stepfather's mess.

His stepfather had bought into Arkansas aviation sales, a failing airplane service station.

The books were cooked.

What looked like profits were losses.

Hook discovered this the hard way.

The confrontation with his business partner ended in a fistfight.

Fred could have walked away.

His inheritance was secure.

But he'd already assigned his mother $100,000 a year from his trust for the next decade.

Now she was about to pour all that money into savings from her current husband's disaster.

So Fred took control.

Within a year, he transformed Arkansas Aviation from a gas and repair shop into a corporate jets parts broker.

Sales jumped 1,500% to $9 million.

Profit this time was $250,000.

But Smith discovered something more important than money.

When Arkansas Aviation ordered rush aircraft parts, they might arrive in two days or two weeks.

Nobody knew.