The history of air cargo in the United States starts with the historic flight of Dayton, Ohio brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright's flying machine at Kittyhawk, North Carolina in 1903 ("Commemorating a Century of Wings - An Overview"). The Wright brothers, who were actually printers and bicycle builders, had started with a kite and then three gliders before developing their flying machine, and the latter was followed by two more aircraft, each more evolved than the last ("Commemorating a Century of Wings - An Overview"). Thanks to their invention, U.S. air cargo was born, and it has continued to evolve to the present day. This paper will discuss the past, present, and future of U.S. air cargo and will conclude with a brief summary and a reflection on the air cargo industry to come.
With the advent of the Wrights' airplane came an initial opportunity to use it for transporting cargo. Only seven years after the groundbreaking first flight at Kittyhawk, the brothers were approached by a local businessman asking to use one of their airplanes to transport ten bales of silk from their test grounds of Huffman Prairie Flying Fields in Dayton to Columbus, Ohio 100 miles away ("The History of Air Cargo"). For the privilege, the businessman paid the Wright Brothers $5,000 ("The History of Air Cargo"). The commercial air cargo industry had begun ("The History of Air Cargo"). In 1919, a 1,100-pound converted bomber was shipped from Washington, D.C. to Chicago via American Railway Express to be used as a freight carrier, and during the 1920s, more airlines operated as freight carriers (Houston). By 1931, the shipments carried by airfreight had increased from 45,000 pounds to nearly one million pounds (Houston). Not surprisingly, air freight carriers soon began to plan and organize the industry, and after the end of World War II four major freight airlines-American, United, TWA, and Eastern-went toget
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