United Parcel Service

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Online shopping surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, placing new demands on UPS as residential shipments climbed sharply.

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United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) is an American package and document delivery company operating worldwide. Its brown trucks have become a familiar sight on the streets of many cities. The UPS corporate headquarters is in Sandy Springs, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

UPS traces its history to 1907, when 19-year-old James E. Casey and another teenager, Claude Ryan, started the American Messenger Co. in Seattle. Using a borrowed $100 as their initial capital, they set up shop in a cellar beneath Ryan’s uncle’s tavern. Their first employees ran errands and made deliveries by bicycle or on foot.

A second office opened in 1912. The following year, the company merged with a competitor and acquired its first delivery truck—a converted Ford Model T. At this time, the founders decided to concentrate on delivering packages from stores and changed the company name to Merchants Parcel Delivery. In 1916, Charles Soderstrom was hired, and it was his idea to paint the company’s vehicles dark brown—a color that tends to camouflage grime effectively.

Two years later, in 1918, Casey began expanding the business outside Seattle, opening operations in Oakland, California, where the company first used the name United Parcel Service. In 1925, the entire company became known as United Parcel Service, or UPS, and by the end of the decade UPS was operating along the entire west coast.

In 1930, UPS moved its headquarters to New York City, where it continued to expand steadily. By the 1950s, however, the company faced a challenge. The need for store delivery was decreasing as more customers were using their cars to take home their purchases. The company responded in 1953 by beginning the territorial expansion of its common carrier service, which it had offered in Southern California since the 1920s.

By accepting packages from the general public, UPS put itself in competition with the U.S. Post Office (now U.S. Postal Service). UPS didn’t clear regulatory barriers to operate in the 48 contiguous U.S. states until 1975.

That same year, the UPS corporate headquarters were moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and the company expanded internationally to Canada. During the next four decades, UPS continued to increase its global presence, eventually offering shipping services in more than 220 countries and territories.

Other notable events in the company’s history included the resumption (in 1953) of air freight service, which it had tried out briefly in 1929. Entering the field of overnight air delivery, the company started UPS Airlines in 1988. The airline operated from a main hub in Louisville, Kentucky, and by the early 21st century it ran a fleet of more than 200 jet aircraft.

Cofounder Casey was active with UPS management until his death in 1983. He, his family, other UPS executives, and their families were the principal stockholders for most of the company’s early history.

UPS became a public company on November 10, 1999, listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol UPS. The initial public offering (IPO) raised $5.47 billion, making it the largest public listing ever sponsored by an American company at the time.

UPS has a decades-long history of growth through acquisitions, including these noteworthy purchases:

The package delivery company has seen its share of scandal and controversy, including these newsmaking events:

UPS Airlines has experienced several major air crashes involving its cargo fleet.

In 2006, a UPS DC-8 cargo plane caught fire while landing at Philadelphia International Airport after the crew detected smoke in the cockpit. The three-person crew escaped with minor injuries, but the aircraft and most of its cargo were destroyed. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that an in-flight cargo fire of undetermined origin, possibly linked to lithium batteries in the cargo, was to blame and noted the absence of fire-suppression system on board as a contributing factor.

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The wreckage of UPS Flight 1354, which crashed August 14, 2013, while approaching the airport in Birmingham, Alabama.

National Transportation Safety Board

In 2013, a UPS Airbus A300 crashed short of the runway while approaching Birmingham–Shuttlesworth International Airport in Alabama, killing both pilots. Investigators found that the aircraft descended below its proper glide path after the captain failed to properly monitor altitude and that fatigue contributed to the accident. The NTSB also criticized UPS for not providing full weather data to the crew and for lax safety practices.

In November 2025, a UPS McDonnell Douglas MD-11 cargo jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. The aircraft, carrying three crew members, lost its left engine during takeoff and crashed moments later beyond the runway, striking several industrial buildings. The crash killed at least 11, most of them on the ground, and injured several others. The resulting explosion and fires—fed by about 38,000 gallons of jet fuel—engulfed nearby structures, including a petroleum recycling facility and an auto salvage yard, and led Kentucky’s governor to declare a state of emergency. The flight had been bound for Honolulu, and the crash briefly disrupted operations at the company’s largest air-cargo facility, known as UPS Worldport.

UPS made history in 2019 when its UPS Flight Forward subsidiary became the first company to receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate a drone airline.

UPS initially focused on drone deliveries that support health care, but the FAA certification places no limits on the size or scope of the company’s drone operations. UPS Flight Forward can fly an unlimited number of drones, which may exceed 55 pounds and be commanded by an unlimited number of remote operators. The FAA certification even permits UPS drones to fly at night.

Will UPS increasingly deliver packages via drone? Maybe. The shipping company received FAA approval in 2023 to fly drones without the need for visual observers, known as beyond the visual line of sight deliveries, marking another major regulatory accomplishment.