Becoming American Express:
150+ Years of Reinvention
and Customer Service
EXPRESSMEN JOIN FORCES
Established in 1850 in New York, American Express
Company was among the first and most successful express delivery businesses
to arise during the rapid westward expansion of the United States. The U.S.
Postal Service at the time was slow, expensive and nonexistent in many
areas. Nothing larger than a letter-sized envelope could be sent by mail,
and certainly nothing valuable, as a fair number of deliveries were lost or
stolen enroute.
The express companies served as a lifeline to the growing nation. Intrepid expressmen, typically on horseback or driving stagecoaches, traversed from the eastern cities to the western frontier, transporting correspondence, parcels, freight, gold and currency, among countless other goods. American Express quickly earned a reputation as the best in the fledgling industry – the company that delivered, literally.
Although in its early years American Express was not itself a financial services company, its largest and most consistent clients were banks. Delivering the banks’ typically small parcels – stock certificates, notes, currency and other financial instruments – was considerably more profitable than transporting larger freight. Soon the company would scale down its parcel and freight delivery business in favor of creating and selling its own financial products.
