UPS
Alex Brogan
The United Parcel Service began as most American business legends do: with two teenagers, a hundred-dollar loan, and a willingness to pedal bicycles through Seattle's punishing hills for pocket change.
In 1907, Jim Casey and Claude Ryan weren't building a logistics empire. They were running errands. The American Messenger Company occupied a basement, employed kids on bikes, and competed for telegraph deliveries in a city where every message meant climbing another steep grade. No grand vision. Just grit and the immediate need to make money.
"We were just a couple of kids with a bike and a dream," Casey would later say, though the dream part came in retrospect.