Emery Air Freight Corp. - Specimen Stock

Specimen Stock printed by American Bank Note Company. Incorporated in 1946.

Emery Air Freight Corporation, commonly known as Emery Worldwide, is an integrated air freight carrier that operates in 88 countries, carrying mainly business-to-business commercial parcel, package, and freight shipments over five pounds for next-day or second-day arrival. A pioneering company in air freight forwarding and for decades an acknowledged industry leader, Emery has struggled since the mid-1980s, losing money and its independence, but Emery remains a viable and avowedly important part of the corporate strategy of its parent company, Consolidated Freightways, Inc. Emery Air Freight was founded in 1946 as a freight-forwarding operation by Navy veteran John Colvin Emery, Sr., who rejoined civilian life with experience in military air transport service. He would have returned to the Railway Express Agency (REA), where he had worked since 1937, if REA had shown interest in his air freight-forwarding ideas. But REA was not interested, so he began his own operation with three employees, two used trucks, $125,000 in borrowed money, and one customer—the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The first year Emery moved 50 tons of air freight for $30,000. John C. Emery, Jr. served as Emery Air Freight’s sales vice president from the company’s inception until 1956. Prior to joining the family business, he had spent one year with United Airlines and one year at National Airline. Forwarders connected shippers with airlines, tracked shipments’ progress from airport to airport, and then moved the cargo from final airport to final ground destination, using trucks or any other ground transportation deemed necessary. John, Sr. entered a niche market as part of the burgeoning air freight industry which many armed forces veterans such as himself were creating, including all-freight airlines like Slick Airways and the Flying Tiger Line or forwarders of Emery Air Freight’s caliber, which transported cargo to other freight lines as well as to regular passenger lines. The industry’s potential was great, but obstacles loomed at every turn for the newcomers. For instance, when Slick, the nation’s largest freight carrier in the late 1940s, and 18 other all-cargo carriers achieved common-carrier status in 1947, they no longer were permitted to give forwarders a rate break on the consolidated less-than-planeload shipment, one of the forwarders’ bread-and-butter items.

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