Franchise News

Franchise Information for Successful Business Ownership

The FedEx franchise is a company that has been operational for a few decades now and it used to be referred to as the FDX Corporation before the name was changed in the year 2000. This is a franchise that offers logistics services and the headquarters of the company can be found in Memphis, Tennessee in the United States. The name FedEx is actually an abbreviation of the word ‘Federal Express’ which was originally the name of the air division of the company. The FedEx franchise began official operation in the year 1997 after its official launch. The main service that the company was offering at that moment was express shipping but this changed when they purchased the Caliber System Inc. After the incorporation of Caliber into their unit, this company was now able to offer more services to its customers. This was made possible mainly owing to the fact that the Caliber System Inc had other subsidiaries that it was working with. All of these subsidiaries of the Caliber enabled the FedEx franchise to be able to grow exponentially. The subsidiaries of the Caliber System Inc include: The RPS, Robert Express and the Viking Freight. RPS is a company that is involved in delivering small packages via the road; Robert Express is a company that uses the shipping method and Viking Freight is involved in serving mainly the Western U.S region. The FedEx franchise has been in joint service even when it was still operating under the name FDX Corporation. This franchise had formed a joint partnership with the company British Airways in the period of the 80s but it didn’t last long. In the year 2004, this franchise acquired another company by the name Parcel Direct which was involved in the parcel consolidator niche industry. This franchise re-branded the company and came up with the FedEx SmartPost as a result. The FedEx franchise has also been through its fair share of challenges because in the year 2007, the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) released a statement that the company was in the verge of facing a $319 million tax liability. The IRS claimed that this tax liability was as a result of misclassification of the operatives that it had with regards to its existence as an independent contractor. However, these claims were withdrawn by the IRS a year later after it was established that the statement was a misguided one.