ASU honors U-Haul’s Shoen
W.P. Carey School names its executive of the year
Some of Edward “Joe” Shoen’s management tenets seem like a recipe for chaos, like allowing employers to work mostly unsupervised or letting customers call him on his cellphone.
Yet the chairman and CEO of Phoenix-based U-Haul International and head of Amerco, U-Haul’s parent corporation, has a strong belief that most people will do the right thing and common sense usually will prevail, especially if top executives and managers don’t get in the way.
“Basically everyone who works for us works unsupervised,” said Shoen, who was honored Wednesday as executive of the year by Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business at a luncheon that drew about 150 people. “What we really want to do is free everyone to be productive.”
That’s a lot of trust for a company that employs more than 26,000 people, including 3,600 in Arizona, with more than 280,000 trucks, trailers and towing devices and 21,000 rental locations.
With such broad operations, it’s critical that employees up and down the company be able to offer good customer service, which Shoen called UHaul’s top priority. “Decisions should be made at the lowest level they can be made,” he said.
In addition, customers should be treated like family, Shoen said, while noting that most customers are adaptable and willing to work out problems
when they arise. For example, Shoen cited peak demand periods around the end of each month, when available trucks and trailers frequently are in short supply.
“We often call customers and ask if they can bring a truck back an hour or two early because someone else needs it,” he said. Most customers comply with such requests if you explain the situation, he said.
In answer to a question from the audience, Shoen said he still doesn’t know how self-driving vehicles might affect the do-it-yourself moving business, though he said the experience still seems highly satisfying for customers. “People get a lot of psychic reward traveling with their goods,” he said. “They like to know (the stuff) is right behind them.”
Shoen too is willing to put in extra effort and said he doesn’t mind when customers contact him directly, such as late last Saturday night, when a stranger called him on his cellphone, concerned that her son had been stopped at a checkpoint inside Texas while driving
“Basically everyone who works for us works unsupervised. What we really want to do is free everyone to be productive. ... Decisions should be made at the lowest level they can be made.” EDWARD “JOE” SHOEN CHAIRMAN AND CEO, U-HAUL INTERNATIONAL
a U-Haul truck. The vehicle, it turned out, earlier had been reported stolen, which immigration officials had spotted.
Shoen made some calls, and the company got the matter straightened out. He doesn’t blame the woman for waking him up. “If my kid was (detained), I also would like to call someone who could fix it,” he said.