Jack Taylor, founder of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, dies at age 94
Jack C. Taylor was a young salesman at a St. Louis Cadillac dealership in 1957 when he became intrigued by the relatively new practice of automobile leasing. “You’ve been looking for someone to start the leasing business,” he told his boss. “I’d like to do it.”
Obtaining a quarter interest in the venture, Taylor and an assistant set up an office walled off from the dealership’s noisy service bays and called it Executive Leasing. It had only seven cars, and Taylor would let the phone ring a few extra times so that potential customers would think business was brisk.
Soon, it would be. When Taylor died Saturday in St. Louis at 94, he presided over an unconventional automotive industry colossus, Enterprise Holdings, a familyowned business that since 2007 has encompassed the Alamo Rent A Car and National Car Rental brands, as well as Enterprise Rent-A-Car and other interests.
Enterprise, identified by its trademark green and white “e” logo and the slogan “We’ll Pick You Up,” says it had $19.4 billion in revenue in 2015 and more than 1.7 million vehicles, double the size of Hertz or Avis, its major U.S. rivals. With a retail automotive division, it is also the largest buyer and seller of cars and trucks in the world.
But despite its size, Enterprise has attracted less notice than its big competitors, particularly among business travelers, mainly because of its traditional focus on downtown and suburban locations, rather than airports, and its private ownership.
Enterprise began operating at airports only in 1995. It bought the Alamo and National brands in 2007 precisely to expand its foothold in the airport market. Forbes magazine estimated Taylor’s wealth at $5.3 billion this year.
Taylor, tall, unassuming and a dapper dresser, liked to say that he instilled entrepreneurial spirit in his branch managers by treating them as partners, with pay and promotion based on local results. Enterprise employs about 90,000 people with about 8,000 branches in the United States and about 70 other countries.
The Enterprise staff of 200 recruiters is believed to hire more college graduates each year than any other U.S. firm, starting most of these as management trainees washing and vacuuming cars.
Jack Crawford Taylor was born April 14, 1922, in St. Louis to Melburne Taylor and the former Dorothy Crawford.
A poor student by his account, he joked that World War II, which ended his college career after two semesters at Washington University, “saved me from any further educational opportunities.”
Enlisting in the U.S. Navy after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Taylor flew a Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter from the decks of aircraft carriers in the Pacific, including the USS Enterprise, for which he named his company. He was twice decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He is survived by a son and a daughter, five granddaughters and three great-granddaughters.