United Parcel Service First Officer Hat Badge 2nd Issue

Louisville, KY 1907-Current

In 1986, UPS founded International Parcel Express (IPX) as a joint venture with DHL. IPX was formed in order to try to obtain a small package authority between the US and Japan for UPS and DHL. At the time, UPS used several "contract carriers" to carry their packages domestically and to Cologne, Germany, which was their only foreign operation. The four primary contract carriers were Evergreen International, Interstate Airlines, Ryan Air and Orion.

In 1987, after losing out on the small package authority to Japan, UPS bought out DHL's share of IPX and announced the cancellation of all the contract flying for the UPS system, putting all the UPS call-sign flights on IPX's certificate, starting in January, 1988, and renaming "IPX" as "UPS".