The Air Cargo Industry

A Brief History of the All Cargo Airlines Part One

The concept of moving cargo by air began with Air Mail in the USA. This one primary purpose lead to the formation of the major airlines. The US Post Office began flying mail as far back as 1909, with a handful of small fledging private air services with small, flimsy cloth covered airplanes. However these small private firms proved unreliable and some were somewhat corrupt, and the USPS soon dropped these services, opting instead to use the US Army Air Corps. In those days, even the best airplanes were limited to lower altitudes, with little or no navigational aids available. Many airplanes and pilots were lost due to weather and all the other hazards.

After Charles Lindburgh flew solo across the Atlantic, the concept of safe air travel began to convince the public. The US Army informed the US Postal Service that they would no longer operate mail flights, due to the loss of many highly trained pilots and airplanes. The Post Office in turn returned to the public sector in search of relable service. By then the technology had improved considerably, although weather remained a major obstacle to early aviation.

A few companies had begun to produce airplanes capable of flying passengers, among them Boeing, who had been building a fleet of sea planes for the US Navy during the war. They produced a series of wooden passenger airplanes for Boeing Air Transport Co. In Dearborn, Michigan, Henry Ford, also seeing the potential for public air transport began producing an all metal three engined airplane called the Ford Tri-Motor. At the time the Ford airplane was the state of the art in air travel. The Fokker Airplane Co, had been building a fleet of successful airliner types for a European Airline industry that by this time had been already established. The US was slow in accepting aviation, with the military being the major customer , did not order or purchase aircraft, and this stiffled development and new aviation technology.