Tuesday, July 5, 2011

We've Come A Long Way Baby

Do you remember the year 1983? Was your company in business 28 years ago? This was the year that Vic Finnegan started American Expediting out of his garage. Sounds like the story of how Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs started Apple Computer just 7 years earlier. While Vic may not have acquired the stardom of these inventors, he did pioneer the courier business in Philadelphia, and grew to become a premiere player in the rush delivery industry across the country.

Just to give you a perspective on how far the courier industry has come since 1983, I’ve listed four new products that were released in that year: The Internet was founded; Motorola introduced the first mobile phone; IBM released the PC XT the father of today’s computer for $8000 (without monitor); and Microsoft introduced Microsoft WORD. Today our offices communicate with each other over high speed internet connections, with computers that cost little more than a nice wrist watch. We teleconference our 34 offices on video, check on our customers via webmail on our smart phones, and notify our customers when their packages are delivered within seconds of completion.

With all this available technology, there is one constant in our business that may never change. That is the hard work of many incredible individuals. People with the attitude “I’ll do whatever it takes to help our customers.” The team behind American Expediting never sleeps. If any local office closes after hours, our National Call Center manages their fleet of drivers. We are known to really care about our customers. You could say we have a lot of “heart.”

Speaking of heart, did you know that the year 1983 brought us the first artificial heart? It was implanted in the first human, Barney Clark. Like the pioneers who helped extend his life, we at American Expediting like to believe that we have been helping to save lives for the good part of three decades. Advances in technology have helped us to improve on the quality of your lives. Whether we are rushing a heart valve to an emergency room, or taking care of a last minute shipment that allows you to head home to your family when you have the need.