FedEx Trivia
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48 free FedEx trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
46 free FedEx trivia questions with answers. FedEx started as a Yale term paper, flew 186 packages on its first night, and once covered a fuel bill with blackjack winnings. This quiz covers the company from Little Rock to the Memphis Superhub: Fred Smith's Marine Corps years, the Falcon 20s and 727s, the ZapMail fax flop, the Flying Tigers, Kinko's and TNT deals, and the spin-off of FedEx Freight. It also takes in the brand everyone knows: the arrow hidden in the logo, the purple and orange, the 'absolutely, positively' slogan, Cast Away and its unopened package, the FedEx Cup, FedExField and the Grizzlies' arena. Geography fans get the hubs from Indianapolis to Guangzhou. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01FedEx was founded in 1971 in which city, before moving its operations two years later?
Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock, Arkansas: the first packages flew only after Smith moved the company to an airport that offered spare hangars and promised improvements.
Q 02Which city is home to FedEx's headquarters and its main air hub?
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee: after founder Fred Smith died in 2025, the city renamed its airport Frederick W. Smith International in his honour.
Q 03Fred Smith first sketched the idea for a next-day delivery network in what?
A term paper at Yale
A term paper at Yale: his economics professor was unimpressed, and Smith later could not recall the grade, guessing it was his usual C.
Q 04Fred Smith founded FedEx hoping to land which institution as its first customer?
The Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve: Smith pitched flying its cheques between cities by next morning, and though that deal fell through, the 'Federal' in Federal Express stayed.
Q 05On its first night of operations in April 1973, how many packages did FedEx carry?
186
186 packages flew on 14 small jets to 25 cities that night; in 1976 the nightly average reached 19,000 and the company moved into profit.
Q 06FedEx began nightly service in 1973 with fourteen small jets built by which manufacturer?
Dassault
Dassault built the Falcon 20, a French business jet that FedEx refitted for cargo; airline rules kept the newcomer to small aircraft until 1977.
Q 07Legend says FedEx's Fred Smith turned the company's last $5,000 into $27,000 in Las Vegas playing what?
Blackjack
Blackjack: Smith later said the win 'wasn't decisive, but it was an omen that things would get better', and he went on to raise a further $11 million.
Q 08How does the famous FedEx slogan "When it absolutely, positively has to be there…" end?
Overnight
Overnight: the line ran with an early-1980s ad starring fast-talker John "Motormouth" Moschitta Jr., whose breakneck delivery in it won a Clio Award.
Q 09After Congress deregulated air cargo in 1977, what were the first large aircraft FedEx bought?
Boeing 727s
Boeing 727s: seven arrived after Fred Smith led the lobbying campaign that persuaded Congress to lift rules keeping cargo carriers to small aircraft.
Q 10ZapMail, launched in 1984 and a costly flop, was a FedEx service for sending what?
Faxes
Faxes: ZapMail sent up to five pages in under two hours for $35, until customers found it cheaper to buy their own fax machines, costing FedEx hundreds of millions.
Q 11Which veteran cargo airline did FedEx buy in the late 1980s to gain its international routes?
Flying Tiger Line
Flying Tiger Line was started in 1945 by a pilot of the wartime Flying Tigers, who brought fellow veterans of the unit in to fly cargo with him.
Q 12After FedEx bought Caliber System in 1998, its parcel carrier RPS was renamed as which FedEx service?
FedEx Ground
FedEx Ground: RPS had been putting barcodes on parcels since 1985, and its trucks gave a company built on aircraft a cheaper way to deliver.
Q 13Which chain of copy shops did FedEx buy in 2004 and later rename FedEx Office?
Kinko's
Q 21What did a 2003 FedEx Super Bowl ad, spoofing Tom Hanks's desert-island film, reveal inside the survivor's unopened package?
A satellite phone
A satellite phone, plus a GPS locator, fishing rod, water purifier and seeds: 'Just silly stuff,' says the woman who opens it, listing the very things that would have eased or ended his years on the island.
Q 22What is painted on the one FedEx package that Tom Hanks's stranded Chuck Noland refuses to open?
Golden angel wings
Golden angel wings: he ties the parcel to his raft still sealed and, once home, drives it to the Texas ranch of the sculptor who sent it.
Q 23Tom Hanks's stranded FedEx man talks to a volleyball named after which sporting goods brand?
Wilson
Kinko's was founder Paul Orfalea's own nickname, earned by his curly hair; his first shop near a California campus got so busy he wheeled the copier onto the sidewalk.
Q 14In 1994 fedex.com became the first transport website to let customers do what?
Track a package online
Track a package online: the data was already there, because FedEx couriers had been scanning every parcel with hand-held barcode readers since 1986.
Q 15FedEx agreed in 2015 to pay €4.4 billion for TNT Express, a courier headquartered in which country?
The Netherlands
The Netherlands: UPS had tried to buy the Dutch courier first, but EU competition regulators objected and it pulled out two years before FedEx stepped in.
Q 16TNT, the courier FedEx took over in 2016, began in 1946 as one truck in which Australian city?
Sydney
Sydney: Ken Thomas bought a five-ton truck to haul timber while keeping his office job, and his firm later took the name Thomas Nationwide Transport.
Q 17What is hidden in the negative space of the FedEx wordmark, between the 'E' and the 'x'?
A right-pointing arrow
A right-pointing arrow: designer Lindon Leader says nobody set out to draw one, but he spotted it in a tightly spaced trial and built a custom typeface to sharpen it.
Q 18The first jet FedEx ever flew is now in the collection of which institution?
The Smithsonian
The Smithsonian: FedEx gave the museum the small business jet it began with after about ten years of package flights, and it is on show at the centre beside Dulles Airport.
Q 19Which two colours make up the standard FedEx logo that all units were told to adopt from 2016?
Purple and orange
Purple and orange: until 2016 the second half of the logo changed colour from one division to the next, and FedEx dropped the rest because orange was the scheme people recognised.
Q 20In which 2000 film does Tom Hanks play a FedEx troubleshooter stranded on a desert island?
Cast Away
Cast Away: FedEx paid nothing for its starring role, and hesitated before saying yes because the script has one of its own planes crash into the Pacific.
Wilson: after gashing his hand he flings the ball aside, then turns the bloody handprint into a face and keeps it as his only companion.
Q 24Starting in 2007, FedEx became title sponsor of the season-long playoffs of which sport?
PGA Tour golf
PGA Tour golf: the first FedEx Cup's $10 million bonus was not paid in cash but into the winner's retirement account, locked until he turned 45.
Q 25In 1995 FedEx became the only US all-cargo airline with rights to fly to which country?
China
China: FedEx bought the route rights from another American carrier, then built a hub at Subic Bay in the Philippines to feed next-day flights across Asia.
Q 26From 1999 to 2024, FedEx held the naming rights to the stadium of which NFL team?
Washington Commanders
Washington Commanders: in July 2020 FedEx became the first major sponsor to ask the team to drop its old Redskins name, and a review was announced the next day.
Q 27In 1990 FedEx became the first service company to win which American award for quality?
The Malcolm Baldrige Award
The Malcolm Baldrige Award: Congress named it for Ronald Reagan's commerce secretary after he was killed in a rodeo accident in 1987.
Q 28Which NASCAR team ran the FedEx-sponsored No. 11 car in the Cup Series from 2005 to 2024?
Joe Gibbs Racing
Joe Gibbs Racing: Jason Leffler began 2005 in the FedEx car, and Denny Hamlin took it over late that year and raced in FedEx colours until the sponsor left after 2024.
Q 29In which US military branch did Fred Smith serve in Vietnam, earning a Silver Star?
The Marine Corps
The Marine Corps: his Silver Star citation says he ran through enemy fire to pull wounded men clear, then led a flanking attack that routed a North Vietnamese unit.
Q 30Fred Smith's own $4 million stake in FedEx at its 1971 founding came from where?
A family inheritance
A family inheritance: his father, who built a Southern bus line that became part of Greyhound, had died when Fred was four.