consolidation service most commonly used for residential deliveries of small, lightweight parcels. It is cheaper than ground package delivery but speeds are generally one to two days slower. Parcels are trackable but delivery dates are not guaranteed. The service is available only to shippers who meet certain requirements and have a SmartPost contract in place with FedEx. Ground Economy was originally Parcel Direct, founded in 1998 by Quad Graphics to provide delivery services for its catalog publishing customers. Since its founding, Parcel Direct had expanded both its network of hub facilities and its parcel services buying Commerce, California-based parcel delivery company PaqFast, Inc. in early 2004. When FedEx acquired it in 2004, Parcel Direct had 12 distribution hubs across the US and 450 employees. Parcel Direct's parcel consolidation model relied on "zone skipping", a logistics approach where packages are transported most of the way to their destination through the carrier's network and handed over to the USPS for delivery. This reduces costs by allowing bulk transportation of parcels between hubs and not requiring it to maintain its own final mile delivery network. Under FedEx, Parcel Direct was rebranded FedEx SmartPost and continued to grow its hub network, reaching 26 nationwide by 2021. Pickups from smaller shippers are performed by FedEx Ground which transfers them into the SmartPost network at the nearest hub. Dedicated FedEx SmartPost trailers pick up from larger shippers and transport shipments directly into the network. Initially, all final mile deliveries were handled by the USPS. However, starting in 2019, FedEx began shifting SmartPost deliveries to its own Ground and Home Delivery networks and in 2020 said it had completed the shift and was delivering nearly all SmartPost packages itself. FedEx rebranded the service FedEx Ground Economy in 2021. Branding In the early 2000s, most FedEx operating units used variants of the FedEx logo with a purple Fed followed by Ex in various colors. Only the FedEx Express unit used the original color combination of a purple Fed and orange Ex. The FedEx Ground logo used a green Ex under this branding. In August 2016, FedEx announced that it would be standardizing all its operating units to use the purple Fed and orange Ex previously used by FedEx Express. While the rebranding began in 2016, FedEx said it expected it to take until 2021 for all other color variants to be phased out across all operating units. References