UPS was half a century old in 1957. In June of that year, I was a seventeen-year-old Californian right out of high school and had already secured morning employment. Still, I complained to a neighbor who always wore a brown uniform that I needed an afternoon job too.

"Why don't you go down to U.P.?" he said.

"Union Pacific?" I queried.

"No, United Parcel. They always need guys to load and unload in the afternoons."

So in June, I became a UPSer, even though I wouldn't be eighteen until July. "Close enough," they said, and I was assigned to load the Arcadia trailer at the old 9th Street Sort in downtown Los Angeles, starting at $1.62 an hour. After a contractual increase and a promotion to router (sorter), I made $2.05 an hour. This was excellent pay at the time, and among my friends, I was the first to break the $2 barrier, making way more than any of them.

In August, the company gave us free cake and pamphlets commemorating the company's fiftieth anniversary. In December we moved into the new state-of-the-art Olympic facility next door, where men in suits were always around checking things out. Another UPSer gave me the heads-up that one of them was company founder Jim Casey.

I sorted for UPS and attended a community college, but quit the company in January 1958, after which I entered the U.S. Army. As soon as I returned to Los Angeles in late 1960, I headed for UPS. By then I was twenty-one, and they hired me as a seasonal driver. On January 17, 1961, I was called back to join Hollywood Center as a regular UPS driver.

From the very beginning, I had heard stories about the company's tireless founder, the guy who'd been pointed out to me a couple of years before. He was a living legend. Jim Casey, the son of Irish immigrants, working from the age of eleven to support a family of five. In 1907, in a basement beneath a Seattle saloon, he conceived the American Messenger Company, which eventually became United Parcel Service.

I drove for five years and two weeks, just barely enough time to get my gold UPS watch for five years' safe driving. In 1966, I entered management and began to edit the local company publication. All the stories I'd heard about the company's origins and history took on new clarity as I met and got closer to the great men who were leading UPS into new territories and increasingly better service, great men including Jim Casey. Though retired and living in New York, he was still a presence. After I got promoted to the region staff, I was fortunate enough to meet him on numerous occasions. His unwavering insistence on strong values kept UPS and its employees on course.

Much later, when I was finishing my career at UPS in the 1990s, books about big American companies and legendary American entrepreneurs were coming out in droves. Yet the story of our incredible company remained untold. UPS—Big Brown—was by then well known and yet a mystery.

I never planned to do a book on UPS, though in my retirement I had written two books on Baja California. A friend, Shirley Miller, who had been married to Jim Casey's nephew, suggested back in 1999 that of anyone, I should be the person to write the UPS story. I mulled it over and realized that the company's centennial loomed in the distance. It's been on my mind ever since, even though I wrote a book about Palm Springs in the meantime.

It happened one step at a time, getting acquainted with Paul Casey and other members of the family and convincing them of my honorable objectives and purpose. It meant trips to Seattle, Washington, and to Candelaria and Goldfield in Nevada. Even in Ireland, I looked up the Casey family ancestral home.

I reestablished contact with numerous UPS retirees through e-mail. I dug up all my old annual reports, old company publications, and any piece of paper that had brown on it. I learned to research on the Internet and delighted in several "ah-ha" moments. As my manuscript shifted from a primarily historical narrative to a more all-encompassing story, I talked to drivers and current managers.

Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS will be the first business biography written regarding this elusive yet highly successful corporation. I'm proud of these pages—an epic snapshot of American business and culture over the past hundred years—as I'm proud of having worked for such a great company.

You'll read how United Parcel Service grew on the heels of the robber barons and the Wild West gold rush euphoria, by providing delivery service for department stores, then how it evolved into a common carrier. Led by determined men, the company expanded into new cities and states against the background of the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, and the rise of the labor movement. The book shows how the delivery business became "Big Brown" as it burgeoned across our continent through World War II, the postwar suburban years, and the civil rights unrest.

Today, UPS grapples with the need to conserve energy sources. It works to alleviate environmental problems. It maximizes the use of technology in its now-global presence with stunning innovations in package sorting, interstate commerce, and finally, international commerce with its customs brokering, freight forwarding, and supply-chain solutions. UPS no longer just delivers; it now enables global commerce. And Jim Casey remains the center of the UPS universe.

The rise of corporatism, reflected in present lobbyist influence, has pulled the shipping giant into Washington, D.C., in its drive to maintain what has always been the company's most pressing agenda—outstanding service for its customers. UPS's commitment to keep Americans working with insourcing, its largely employee-owned stock, and the means by which UPS's century-old business model continues to perform in today's global economy are just a few of the book's fascinating themes.

As I put the finishing touches on this book—which actually represents a lifetime of work, not just for me, but for all UPSers—Jim Casey's dream of excellence and unstoppable determination enriches the spirit that now serves nearly 8 million people daily. UPS still upholds Casey's decades-old corporate values to the tune of huge profits, $3.87 billion last year. How could the reading public respond other than marvel over how this occurred? How could the example of UPS's cautious and continual rise not enormously benefit other businesspeople? Marveling and enormous benefit are my hopes behind Big Brown.

 Note:  A lot of the background research for Big Brown: The Untold UPS Story is available for interested readers. Several supple-mental stories about UPS are printed on the author's Web site. For this more detailed accounting and more historical information, please go to www.gregniemann.com