This category covers establishments primarily engaged in short-term rental or extended-term leasing (with or without maintenance) of trucks, truck tractors, or semitrailers without drivers. Establishments primarily engaged in finance leasing of trucks are classified in Finance, SIC 6159: Miscellaneous Business Credit Institutions; those renting trucks with drivers are classified in various trucking and courier service industries; and those primarily engaged in renting and leasing, except finance leasing, of industrial trucks are classified in SIC 7359: Equipment Rental and Leasing, Not Elsewhere Classified.
532120 (Truck, Utility Trailer and RV (Recreational Vehicle) Rental and Leasing)
Growth in the truck rental market slowed in the mid 1990s after an expansive period in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By the end of the 1990s, the industry continued to grow, and 35 percent of all trucks in service in the United states were owned by rental or leasing companies. The industry leader, U-Haul International Inc., continued to dominate, owning well over half of all the rental trucks in service in the United States and owning 52 percent of the market. The Budget Group, with Budget Truck Rentals and Ryder TRS comprised 27 percent of the market. The remaining 21 percent was made up of a few other midsized players, such as Rollins Truck Leasing Corp. and Penske Truck Leasing, plus thousands of small operators. The industry generated 1997 revenues of $10 billion, employed 46,566 workers, with an annual payroll of $1.4 billion.
Growth in the truck rental market slowed in the mid 1990s after the expansive period of the late 1980s and early 1990s, as U-Haul and Ryder competed for expansion of dealer locations and market share in the consumer truck market. Ryder sold its Ryder Consumer Truck Rental division during 1996, but the Budget Group, the new owners, have indicated a commitment to their current name and market identity as Ryder TRS.
In 1999, U-Haul International led the industry with some 190,000 trucks for rent from over 15,000 dealerships. It reported U.S. rental revenues of over $1.5 billion and employed 14,400 workers. U-Haul's business consisted entirely of rentals to do-it-yourself movers.
Ryder TRS owned a fleet of 33,500 trucks from 3,500 dealer locations. It reported 1999 U.S. rental revenues of $550 million. Some 70 percent of its business was on the consumer side, the remainder coming from business rentals.
Among important trends affecting the industry in the 1990s were changing tax laws, stricter environmental regulations, and efforts by large corporations to keep trucking assets off their books. These all seemed to indicate a strong future for the leasing industry. Larry Miller, then president of Iowa-based Ruan Transportation Management Systems, the third largest truck-leasing company with about 10 percent of the market, told Commercial Carrier Journal in 1990, "Pride of ownership is a luxury. It's the old way of doing business." Among newer regulations affecting fleet ownership were federal laws that required commercial vehicles over 10,000 pounds gross weight to undergo an extensive safety inspection every 12 months; in addition, there were new Environmental Protection Agency regulations regarding underground storage tanks, and the federal Clean Air Act required vehicles to meet tougher emission standards.
Amtralease, a network of independent leasing companies, estimated that 30 percent of all commercial trucks in the early 1990s were leased, compared to less than 20 percent in the 1980s. However, Amtralease also reported that profits for truck-leasing companies were flat despite the increase in market share. Although some companies leased large fleets, Commercial Carrier Journal reported that the typical customer leased three to four trucks.
In the late 1980s, many companies with transportation needs began moving to full-service leasing, with the leasing firm assuming responsibility for all matters relating to the vehicle, including purchase, fuel, taxes, licenses, and hauling permits. Don Estes, then president of Ryder Truck Rental, told Beverage World that "full service leasing is basically turning truck transportation problems over to the leasing company." Although drivers sometimes complained about the quality of maintenance with full-service leasing, surveys indicated that repair and maintenance operations at larger lease companies often were better managed and their mechanics better trained than with private fleet operations.
By the turn of the twenty-first century, the larger companies had developed Web sites and launched Internet on-line booking. Internet access allowed customers to communicate directly with the companies, receive instantaneous confirmation of booking, and make payments on-line.
Ryder System, Inc. was founded in 1933 by James A. Ryder. In 1996, in addition to its full-service truck leasing and rental operations, Ryder also provided a variety of aviation and other transportation services, including automobile transport.
In 1932, James Ryder was a high school student in Florida working as a summer laborer for 25 cents an hour when he learned that another student was making 35 cents an hour to drive a truck. The next summer Ryder purchased a 1931 Model A Ford and went into business as a commercial hauler. Ryder struggled through the Depression, slowly building a fleet, and by 1937 the Ryder Trucking Co. owned 37 trucks. In 1938, Ryder learned that a Miami beer distributor was interested in leasing five large trucks. Ryder presented the distributor with a proposal, and Champagne Velvet Beer became the company's first lease account.
Ryder continued as both a local leasing company and an over-the-road transport service for several years. Then, in 1945, two businessmen from Tampa, who had acquired the Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship for Florida, contacted Ryder. The beer was beginning to arrive from the brewery in St. Louis, and the distributors needed trucks in a hurry. Ryder met the need by pulling trucks from its over-the-road fleet. Overnight, Ryder became the largest truck leasing firm in Florida. By the end of the 1940s, Ryder's leasing operations topped $1 million and far exceeded its over-the-road trucking business. Ryder also signed a lease agreement with the Minute Maid Corporation, which gave Ryder national exposure. By 1949, when the company changed its name to the Ryder Truck Rental System, the leased fleet had grown to more than 500 trucks.
In 1955, Ryder reorganized and went public, creating Ryder System, Inc., a holding company that owned the Ryder Truck Rental System and the Great Southern Trucking Company, which Ryder acquired in 1952. In 1956, Ryder initiated a corporate identification program, and by the following year, the entire leased and over-the-road fleet carried the familiar red and black "Big R" trademark. The leasing division also became known as Ryder Truck Rental.
Between 1956 and 1959, Ryder acquired 21 more companies, including the Denver-based Baker Truck Rental, which was then the largest truck leasing firm west of the Mississippi River, and the Alabama-based Dixie Drive-It-Yourself System. Although the "Big R" trademark created some uniformity, the rapid growth left Ryder with trucks painted almost every color imaginable. In 1962, Ryder adopted a common color scheme for all its trucks: bright lemon yellow with a black undercarriage. In 1965, Ryder sold its motor carrier division to International Utilities and focused on the growing truck leasing business. International Utilities continued to operate the trucking business under the Ryder name until 1982.
In 1968, Ryder formed a consumer truck-rental operation known as Ryder One Way. Initially, Ryder planned to purchase 300 trucks for consumer rental; however, a market test in six southern states indicated a greater demand, and Ryder began operations with 1,000 trucks and vans. By the end of the year, Ryder One Way had dealers in 325 cities across the country and ordered another 2,000 trucks. In the mid 1970s Ryder secured a contract with the Department of Defense to provide rental trucks for military personnel at 110 bases in the United States. By 1987, Ryder had surpassed U-Haul as the largest consumer truck-rental operation in the United States. However, U-Haul regained the lead in the early 1990s. In June of 1998, the Budget Group purchased Ryder's truck rental division and ran it under the name Ryder TRS. Ryder maintained 25,000 rental trucks at 80 locations, but its primary area of business was full-service commercial leasing with 109,000 trucks. Ryder had also become a major supplier of integrated logistics services in the United States.
U-Haul International, Inc., was founded in 1945 by L. S. Schoen. Today U-Haul is the largest consumer truck-rental business in the world. U-Haul is a subsidiary of AMERCO, one of the largest privately-owned companies in the United States. The company entered the self-storage industry in 1975 and is now the second largest operator of self-storage in the United States, with 232,000 rooms, over 19 million square feet of space, and 800 company-owned storage locations. U-Haul reports that more than 98 percent of the American public recognize the name U-Haul, making it among the most recognizable registered trademarks in the world.
In 1945, L. S. Schoen slipped out of a military hospital to move his wife and newborn son from Los Angeles to nearby Corona, California. He rented a beat-up utility trailer from a service station, and that night he made a notation in his diary: "I am intrigued by the business potential of this idea especially from the standpoint of one-way rentals." He was discharged from the military later that year and moved his family to Portland, Oregon. Within two weeks, he had purchased his first trailer and painted "U-Haul Co.; Rental Trailers; $2.00 per day" on the sides.
By 1946, Schoen had a fleet of 70 trailers spread out from Seattle to Los Angeles, and in 1948, he decided to go national. He offered one-way rentals from the West Coast to anywhere in the United States. The only catch was that customers had to find service station managers at the end of their trips who were willing to become Schoen's agents. The plan worked, and by the end of the year, U-Haul had a fleet of 200 trailers and a network of agents nationwide.
In 1951, U-Haul launched a low-risk program for fleet ownership of its trailers as a way to raise money and expand the network even faster: investors would purchase trailers from U-Haul, which would assume full responsibility for insurance, maintenance, and distribution. Each month, fleet owners would receive a report and payment for rental activity on their trailers. The fleetownership plan raised $2 million in the first two years. By 1955, there were more than 10,000 U-Haul trailers in 200 fleets scattered around the country, and U-Haul was adding 600 trailers a month.
U-Haul began renting trucks in the late 1950s and dominated the consumer truck-rental industry into the 1970s. However, in 1970, U-Haul acquired A to Z Rental and began a transition from renting trucks and trailers to renting everything from garden tools to dinnerware. In 1974, U-Haul opened more than 100 U-Haul Rental Centers. The transition was hastened by the Arab oil embargo in 1973, which eventually resulted in the closing of many independent service stations that had been the backbone of U-Haul's rental network. In the late 1960s, U-Haul trucks and trailers were available at more than 14,000 service stations, but by the mid 1970s more than 6,000 had gone out of business.
By the early 1980s, there were more than 1,100 U-Haul Rental Centers. However, while it was expanding into new rental businesses, U-Haul was paying less attention to its aging fleet of trucks and trailers. Ryder, whose trucks were air conditioned and featured automatic transmissions, began cutting into U-Haul's market share and overtook U-Haul in 1987. The year before U-Haul was knocked out of first place in consumer truck rentals, two of Schoen's sons gained control of the company and forced their father to resign. They began closing the rental "supermarkets" and refocused on renting truck and trailers. U-Haul eventually regained the market lead it had lost to Ryder. In 1999, U-Haul controlled 52 percent of the truck rental market.
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