COURIER SERVICES

COURIER SERVICES are companies that transport and deliver documents, packages, and larger shipments of products, although traditionally they specialized in the rapid delivery of such items as legal documents that required signatures. They Provide services to companies and individuals who need rapid service, accountability, and tracking that regular mail does not accommodate. Major courier services that performed these functions in the early 2000s included commercial delivery services, the U.S. Postal Service, and bicycle messenger services.

Courier services began during the late ninteenth and early twentieth centuries, with small companies in a handful of cities across the United States. When few homes had telephones, personal messages had to be carried by hand. Some early companies provided delivery of luggage and other packages. With the rise of large retail and department stores in the early twentieth century, package delivery services became even more popular. The scale of such services grew over the next several decades. Although fuel and rubber shortages during World War II caused a decline in the courier industry, the use of air freight by courier services after the war allowed for wider markets.

Courier services became multifaceted and competitive after 1970 because of the increasingly far-flung nature of business operations in the international economy, the popularity of mail-order retailing, and rising postal rates. Courier services overlapped other forms of transport, such as trucking, and the differences became less distinct. Commercial delivery services, once a supplement to the U.S. Postal Service, competed with the government operated mail system. The Postal Service responded with greater emphasis on its overnight Express Mail delivery and two-day Priority Mail service.

The growth and diversification of the delivery industry raised regulatory issues. Companies that delivered by plane or truck were often governed by separate laws regarding rates and other aspects of their operations. In the late 1980s the document delivery business faced new competition with the development of fax machines and electronic mail. The need for physical delivery of some items remained, however, and the delivery industry was bolstered By the continuing growth of the global marketplace. Some delivery companies began to branch out and offer new services to their clients. These included "logistics," or support, services to help clients increase efficiency by electronically tracking materials used in manufacturing and assisting with processing sales orders and shipments.

Among the oldest and largest U.S. private delivery companies is United Parcel Service (UPS), founded in Seattle, Washington, as the American Messenger Company in 1907. Originally a local parcel delivery service for department stores, UPS expanded and established a large network to ship and deliver packages. In the early 2000s, UPS was the largest carrier for e-commerce, shipping on-line purchases to customers worldwide. In 1999, UPS shareholders voted to make 10 percent of the company stock available to the public. Another major company, Federal Express, founded by entrepreneur Frederick W. Smith in the early 1970s, pioneered large-scale overnight delivery by air, using its own fleet of planes and a central terminal (originally in Memphis, Tenn.) to sort and reroute items.

Both the large commercial courier services and the U.S. Postal Service have increased the speed of national and international package delivery due to the advent of wide-body airplanes that can carry an increased amount of freight. Yet, bicycle messenger services provide an invaluable and timeless service for small-scale, local delivery. Bike messengers were used as early as the late nineteenth century for rapid delivery of Western Union telegrams and government documents. During the 1980s bicycle messenger services became a particularly popular way to deliver items quickly within cities. Their numbers declined slightly with the advent of fax machines and e-mail, but in the early twenty-first century their services remained important links between businesses in large cities like New York and Washington, D.C., as well as in smaller cities throughout the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Haldi, John, and Joseph F. Johnston, Jr. Postal Monopoly: An Assessment of the Private Express Statutes. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1974.

Moroney, Rita L. History of the U.S. Postal Service, 1775–1982. Washington, D.C.: The Service, 1983.

Side, W. Hampton. "Bicycle Messengers Bite the Dust." New Republic (21 December 1992): 16–19.

JohnTownes/h. s.

See alsoMail-Order Houses ; Postal Service, U.S. ; Office Technology ; Western Union Telegraph Company .