What Every Business Owner Can Learn From U-Haul's Growth
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Building a successful business is hard. Making sure it stays successful is even harder. And Joe Schoen has spent nearly 40 years learning that firsthand as the CEO of U-Haul. His parents founded the company in 1945, and when he took over, he had to answer the question every second generation owner faces. How do you keep a company growing without messing up what made it great in the first place? On this episode, Joe shares how U-Haul continues to solve customer problems 80 years after they started and the leadership principles that have helped the company thrive across multiple generations. If you want to know the secret to building a business that outlasts you, listen in.
Okay, so Joe, I've done a little research, but I want our audience to hear this. I want them to hear the origin story of how U-Haul comes to play, because we love how businesses start to just become a solution to a problem. And I want to hear about this road trip that I think is the origin story.
Share that with us. Well, my father ended up in the Navy during World War II, and he was stationed in Corona, California. So when the European theater shut down and we declared victory there, they started letting people go home. So in June, before the Pacific War was resolved, he was released, and my mother and him, she lived in a little trailer. They had an infant son, and now they needed to get back to basically the Portland, Oregon area where they lived. So they had a 44 two-door. And so they could only take a certain amount of stuff and they ended up even though they didn't have a lot of possessions, they gave things away because they couldn't go. So my father observed that they were renting trailers in downtown Los Angeles.
So he went to Los Angeles and tried to rent a trailer. They would not rent him one to take to Oregon. They would just rent it around Los Angeles and bring it back to the same location. So they both thought about that. And then they started driving home and they had, that time it probably took them four or five days to make that trip. And they'd been in business before the war. in the barber and beauty salon business. So they both were kind of business oriented. So they talked about it all the way home, how many people had the same problem they had, which is they couldn't get home. And basically the day they got there, they went into business. They had, neither one ever remembers who came up with the name U-Haul.
They were both just how you would chat. And they started, they had $5,000 of savings. And so they started this with $5,000 and just kept reinvesting and reinvesting. So it's kind of a fun story. So many people after the war were full of energy, and they wanted to make America a better place. And that's kind of their story.
Yeah, I love that neither one of them could remember who came up with the name, but it is a brilliant name, isn't it?
Oh, it's just a great, you know, I mean, talk about a blessing. Having that name, so many people are struggling to get brand recognition or have to make up a phonetic name that means nothing, and here we have a you know, largely a generic name that describes the process. It's just, it's wonderful.
Yeah. So what do you, what have you heard from your father and your mother that you can recall about their early days of getting it going? Because what I love is, is that we're going back into history. What an incredible time in American history.
Yes.
Post-war. I mean, you just think about where we are from a technology standpoint, and they come up with this idea. And I'd love to hear more about some of their early struggles. Here's a good one.
My mother ran the office and my father did the road work. So he, her name was Anna Mary. And so he got her to continue to use her maiden name. Anna Mary Carty. So he would tell people she was the boss.
How did U-Haul’s founders invent the business after World War II?
And he had to do it because he couldn't tell her no. So that was how he managed to use her as the fall guy. No one ever saw her. It would be A.M. Carty. He never said it was a woman. He just said, A.M. Carty won't let me do that.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:05–4:13
2
How did U-Haul’s founders invent the business after World War II?
4:13–19:50
3
Why did U-Haul use independent dealers and handwritten agent letters to scale early on?
19:50–24:48
4
How does U-Haul’s customer-first culture enable people to ‘do it themselves’?
24:48–31:04
5
What practices has Joe Shoen used to preserve U-Haul’s values and retain employees?
31:04–41:07
6
When should a company promote from within versus hire outside talent at U-Haul?
41:07–46:18