He began building rental trailers and splitting the fees for their use with gas station owners whom he franchised as agents. In 1945, at the age of 29, Leonard Shoen co-founded U-Haul with his wife, Anna Mary Carty, in the town of Ridgefield, Washington, with an investment of $5,000. The livery used on rented vehicles is widely recognized, primarily consisting of white and a thick horizontal orange stripe, in addition to a large state- or province-themed picture, known as SuperGraphics. U-Haul rents trucks, trailers, and other pieces of equipment, but many U-Haul centers and dealerships also provide self storage units, moving boxes and associated packing supplies, moving assistance, LPG (propane) refueling, and hitch and trailer wiring installation, among other services.īecause of the company's ubiquity (there are over 17,000 active dealers across the country) the name is sometimes used as a genericized trademark to refer to the services of any self-move rental company. The Shoen family (heirs of founder Sam Shoen) currently owns, both directly and indirectly, about 55 percent of AMERCO. Oxford Life Insurance Company (which provides annuities, life insurance, and Medicare supplement insurance for senior adults).RepWest Insurance Company (which provides optional insurance for customers renting U-Haul vehicles and self-storage space), and.Amerco Real Estate (which purchases existing buildings for conversion to self-storage facilities, existing self-storage facilities and bare land),.U-Haul is owned by U-Haul Holding Company, which in turn is owned by AMERCO, a publicly traded holding company which also operates: The company was founded by Leonard Shoen and Anna Mary Carty in Ridgefield, Washington, who began it in a garage owned by Carty's family, and expanded it through franchising with gas stations. If you’re going to rent a trailer for your move, you should plan refueling stops more frequently than you normally would and make sure there is room in your budget for extra gas.U-Haul is an American moving truck, trailer, and self-storage rental company, based in Phoenix, Arizona, that has been in operation since 1945. Over the first leg of their journey, the Ruizes were shocked by how much they had to refill the gas tank of the car hauling the trailer. Hauling a trailer can greatly lower your car’s gas mileage, especially if you’re driving over mountainous areas like New Mexico (which the Ruizes had to drive through). The other bad surprise came at the gas pump. However, if you’re on a very tight schedule and you can afford to pay a little extra, we recommend just renting your hitch from U-Haul to avoid unforeseen problems like this. Luckily, they were able to find the hitch they needed from another hardware store three days before their move, so everything worked out. With just a week until their move, they had to scramble to get the right hitch. Unfortunately, there was an error at the store and the Ruizes were sent the wrong hitch. The bad things about this move weren’t actually U-Haul’s fault, but they’re worth mentioning.įirst, U-Haul allows you to rent trailer hitches for your car if you want, but the Ruizes found a better deal from a third-party hardware company. Like we’ve mentioned, they didn’t own a ton of stuff to begin with, but they still had to sell most of their big furniture before their move. So, renting a trailer saved the Ruizes over $1,000, but they did have to downsize substantially before it became a realistic option for them. When we requested a quote for the 10-foot truck rental with the same pickup and dropoff locations as the Ruizes, our quoted price was $1,782. 2 While double the storage space might seem nice, the truck rental is much more than twice the price. 1įor comparison, U-Haul’s 10-foot moving truck (the smallest size) has 402 cubic feet of storage space. These trailers have about 200 cubic feet of storage space inside. The Ruizes rented a 5-foot by 8-foot trailer for a 7-day and 2500-mile journey. If you can’t bear to part with your luxurious sectional, your canopy bed, or your antique armoire, you should probably just bite the bullet and rent a moving truck. Renting a moving trailer instead of a truck can save you a whole lot of money, but it requires that you take only the essentials.
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