James E. Casey

James E. Casey, a founder and former chief executive officer of United Parcel Service, died yesterday at a hospital-nursing home in Seattle. He was 95 years old and had lived in Seattle since boyhood. Mr. Casey was a 19-year-old messenger in 1907 when he and a companion started a small messenger service in Seattle with $100 in capital. It was called the American Messenger Company and it consisted of six messengers, two bicycles and a telephone, operating from a 6- by 17-foot basement of a saloon. The company, renamed United Parcel Service in 1919 when it extended its operations to Oakland, Calif., now delivers more than six million packages a day nationwide as well as in West Germany and parts of Canada. Mr. Casey's partner, Claude Ryan, sold his shares in the company in 1917. Mr. Casey stayed on, holding various positions, including president. He retired as chief operating officer and chairman but remained honorary chairman and served on the board until last month, when he became an honorary director. Innovator in Management Mr. Casey was an innovator not only in deliveries but also in management methods. Convinced that a good employee was one who was more than just hired help, he started a profit-sharing program, one of the first adopted by an American business. Today, most of United Parcel's stock is owned by its managers and supervisors, or by retired managers and heirs. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Casey, the eldest of four children, was born March 29, 1888, in Candelaria, a small Nevada mining town. His father, a sometime prospector, sometime innkeeper, moved the family to Seattle, then a bustling boom town, while James was still an infant. The boy had to leave school at 11 to help support the family of six because of his father's failing health. He started out as a delivery boy for a department store at $2.50 a month but also worked as a messenger for a telegraph company. At 15, he and two other messengers went into business, but he sold his share two years later. Mr. Casey returned briefly to Nevada and prospected for gold, then went back to Seattle to found the messenger service. Competing with nine other messenger services, the fledgling company promised ''Best Service and Lowest Rates'' on posters placed near public telephones. Deliveries for Department Stores Package delivery was instituted by the company within months, and with its first truck came a regular delivery service for Seattle department stores and their customers. The expansion to Oakland was followed by growth to Los Angeles in 1922, and five years later the brown trucks were rolling through Portland, Ore., San Francisco and San Diego as well. Mr. Casey brought United Parcel to New York in 1930, with Lord & Taylor and James McCreery & Company among its first customers. As the years went by, other stores gave up their own delivery trucks and turned to United Parcel for more efficient service. United Parcel grew rapidly after World War II. Package handling and sorting machinery developed by Mr. Casey and used industry-wide today allowed United Parcel to go beyond store deliveries and to acquire the operating authority that enabled it to deliver parcels across the country. Employees Involved in Decisions Many of Mr. Casey's close associates at United Parcel had come up through the ranks and had been with him for decades. Among his management principles was to bring executives and managers at various levels into discussions on proposed moves. ''Ideals of our company cannot be carried out from the top alone,'' he once said. ''They must become a part of the makeup of our entire organization. They must be instilled in the minds of all men down through the ranks.'' When in New York, Mr. Casey, a tall, lean bachelor who shunned publicity, lived in a simply furnished, two-room suite at the Waldorf Towers. Survivors include a sister, Marguerite of Seattle, and a brother, Henry J. of Portland.