TIL that in the early days of Fed-Ex, there was one time the company couldn't afford the fuel bill for their planes, so the founder took the company's last $5,000 and went to Las Vegas and won $27,000

Jesus christ. Way to spoil the mood! /s

It’s actually very good to always attach these „privileged success stories“ to these people to demystify them.

This guy was so lucky! It says here also he killed someone in a hit and run (no charges) and separately a passengers of his car died after he flipped it (no charges, the cause of the accident never determined)

Wow, that sounds so easy. I guess anyone can be successful!

Just don’t gamble with your own money. Be sure to take the company’s last $5000 instead.

rolls dice

Fuck. Now I'm capital-less

Someone has never had to deal with DHL.

You'd think the Germans would be fantastic at logistics, but in this case, you'd be very wrong.

Ups staffs their warehouses (or at least did when I worked there as a temp) heavily with temp agency staff who they can toss at any point, they don't give a shit and while my experience was on the packing side (shrink wrapped bundles, barcode stickers, in store displays) some people did do the shipping side, it sucked and they talked about people throwing things around, the quotas were unreasonable, paid next to nothing and the threat of termination was used as a "motivator", by far the worst working experience of my life and I expect FedEx does the same thing. Met some cool people though so not all bad.

I never have had the bad experiences that many claim with shipping companies. I used to praise FedEx as they would make shipments when I was doing apple warranty repairs. If I ordered a replacement part by 5pm, they would have it the next morning before 10am at our facility. Their shipments were $6.95 for any of the parts as well, never understood how they could do it at the time. Circa 2011,12 time period. I'm sure it was because Apple paid them a shit ton, but was like magic.

I'm sure the void would have been filled with anither company.

I never hold anything against FedEx employees because I talk with the drivers often as they deliver to my workplace and they run their drivers so fucking hard, not a single driver has said they like the job. It pays them well, but the trucks are always bad quality and breaking down, and the drivers barely have time to take breaks and eat while getting done at a good time most days.

I always feel bad for them.

UPS is the worst in my neck of the woods. Their delivery estimates are always way off and I often get seriously damaged goods from them.

oh wow, you must lead a sheltered life if the worst you've ever had is fed-ex. bud, they're actually average compared to UPS, DHL etc

You still have 67 hours. You can comeback. Just one more roulette spin.

No, but he went with a thousand other shipping company CEOs and only him and the UPS guy came out with money.

I’ve heard this story a few times and supposedly it happened over a weekend but yeah either the guy was a very good card counter and played a ton or recklessly bet it on roulette and got insanely lucky if this is true.

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$27k in 1971 is about $209k today and it only bought them about a week of fuel.

One could argue it wasn't personal entertainment, that it was a business decision. Investors could sue I'm sure, or have you thrown from the company. But they all won off it