We take for granted today's sophisticated intermodal infrastructure of planes, trains and trucks that zig-zag our country today. We demand that our stuff -- anything and everything ranging from documents to small parcels to furniture, cars and heavy equipment -- travel across an entire country or planet almost overnight.
But this hasn't always been the case, especially in the 1950s and ‘60s when options were far more limited and less immediate. Which raises the question, what would Don Draper and team at Sterling Cooper from Emmy-award winning drama MAD MEN have done to ship their office furniture to winning bidders across the country (just like uShip is about to do) following the current charity auction on eBay?
FedEx or UPS? Not yet, but telegrams were the closest thing and still popular in 1965. Just throw it on a semi-truck? Possibly, but those were mostly for significantly heavy freight. What about a courier service of that day? Yes, they were very active but only regionally at best. What about posting it on uShip? Some transporter would surely be going my way and would bid on the job, right? No dice. The original Internet was still decades away, and it would be over 40 years later that Matt Chasen would create uShip's marketplace model.
So what would the real Don Draper do back in the mid 60s? He'd likely use the only game in town at the time: Railway Express Agency, or REA. This was a rail express service, and it was the FedEx of its day. It had small green delivery trucks at each of its pickup and drop-off locations, but nowhere near size and scale of our trucks today. One would imagine that such limited choices made logistics a slow process, and probably even more painful and relatively expensive than today. To be sure, as a transport model, it certainly was ahead of its time, and as other modes of transport expanded -- semi trucks, planes, and more -- REA's business began to fall off. By 1975, it had filed for bankruptcy. While just a memory today, REA was a true forerunner in what has become an incredibly sophisticated transport and logistics infrastructure.
To keep track of how uShip's Help on Wheels is moving furniture from the set of MAD MEN, check out http://www.uship.com/helponwheels
But this hasn't always been the case, especially in the 1950s and ‘60s when options were far more limited and less immediate. Which raises the question, what would Don Draper and team at Sterling Cooper from Emmy-award winning drama MAD MEN have done to ship their office furniture to winning bidders across the country (just like uShip is about to do) following the current charity auction on eBay?
FedEx or UPS? Not yet, but telegrams were the closest thing and still popular in 1965. Just throw it on a semi-truck? Possibly, but those were mostly for significantly heavy freight. What about a courier service of that day? Yes, they were very active but only regionally at best. What about posting it on uShip? Some transporter would surely be going my way and would bid on the job, right? No dice. The original Internet was still decades away, and it would be over 40 years later that Matt Chasen would create uShip's marketplace model.
So what would the real Don Draper do back in the mid 60s? He'd likely use the only game in town at the time: Railway Express Agency, or REA. This was a rail express service, and it was the FedEx of its day. It had small green delivery trucks at each of its pickup and drop-off locations, but nowhere near size and scale of our trucks today. One would imagine that such limited choices made logistics a slow process, and probably even more painful and relatively expensive than today. To be sure, as a transport model, it certainly was ahead of its time, and as other modes of transport expanded -- semi trucks, planes, and more -- REA's business began to fall off. By 1975, it had filed for bankruptcy. While just a memory today, REA was a true forerunner in what has become an incredibly sophisticated transport and logistics infrastructure.
To keep track of how uShip's Help on Wheels is moving furniture from the set of MAD MEN, check out http://www.uship.com/helponwheels