Actually, it happened a while ago (don't remember what year) when senior management felt that our overseas business was suffering because customers over there thought that "Federal Express" was a government (as in Federal) owned company. So the name was changed to differentiate the company from any country. Seems to have worked, thankfully. This happened well before there was a FedEx Ground, Custom Critical, Kinkos, or any other subsidiary.

 

June 24, 1994

Federal Express announced its new identity as FedEx with a freshly painted MD-11 that had been hidden in a hangar for 2 days. There's an excellent article about the process and the decision on Visual.com: Why Federal Express Became FedEx


Here's an excerpt:

"Its research showed the existing identity had two great strengths: the strong brand equity of Federal Express (and its popular verb form FedEx) both closely identified with speed, reliability, innovation and customer service, and the power of its signature colors purple and orange to communicate urgency and leadership. Research surveys also uncovered problems with the word federal. In 1973, the word had given the company immediate equity, an official alternative to the post office, but today it was more often associated with being bureaucratic and slow. In Latin American countries, it conjured images of the federales, and in some other parts of the world, people had trouble pronouncing Federal Express.

Based on its worldwide focus group research, Landor recommended that the company shorten its brand name to "FedEx" and adopt the tagline "The World On Time" to sum up its key message -- global scope, accessibility, speed, reliability -- in four succinct words. Federal Express was retained as the official corporate name. "


Customers had already been shortening the name to FedEx, so the brand name choice was natural.



The next name change came in 1998 when FedEx acquired RPS, Caliber System, Inc., Viking Freight, Caliber Logistics, Caliber Technology, and Roberts Express. It was at this time the company reorganized into a parent corporation (FDX Corp) and the subsidiaries. What had been Federal Express and then FedEx became FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FDX Corp. Other subsidiaries included FedEx Ground and FedEx Custom Critical.

Of course, we've added more subsidiaries since then, most notably FedEx Kinkos. In 2000 FDX Corp changed its name to FedEx Corporation.




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I flew with the captain that ferried that plane into MEM. He left his flight bag in the cockpit and walked outside the hangar, then wasn't allowed back in to get it. They didn't want him to see the paint, even though he had just flown it there....

 

Tony has the story correct. However I would add that the holding company was established with the intent to keep the operating divisions as separate entities.

There were several articles written as to why this was done. The conclusions of all of them were the same. FDX mgmt wanted to protect the airline status of FedEx aka FedEx Express. Thus this would not allow the couriers to join a union. The analyst believed that if RPS was merged intact into FedEx that the airline status would be in jeopardy. This is what makes FedEx different than UPS. FedEx Express is an airline that operates trucks, UPS is a trucking company that operates airplanes. UPS falls under the NLRB and FedEx Express is under the NMB.

Union busting 101.

 

FedEx annual report 2000

There are a couple interesting paragraphs about the name change.