Fred Smith is not the type of man you’d expect to be known for a lucky streak at a Vegas casino. He does not compete in the World Series of Poker, nor was he part of the MIT Blackjack Team that profited from card counting. Smith is a Vietnam veteran and accomplished CEO who used to fly planes with John Kerry and nearly became Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush. Yet if Fred Smith did not have a lucky streak at a blackjack table in the 1970s, FedEx might not exist today.
As an undergraduate at Yale in 1965, Smith was a charter pilot at a New Haven airport. He learned from pilots who flew for companies like IBM and Xerox — and spent much of their time flying around spare computer parts for broken computers — that the logistics of transporting computer parts and electronics were extremely challenging.
