U-haul chief is ready to talk
Shoen takes calls from customers any time, any day
Five years ago, Edward J. “Joe” Shoen made his cellphone number public.
Shoen, board chairman and president of Amerco, Phoenix-based U-Haul International Inc.’s parent company, still has the same number. And he still answers calls.
Even at home. Even on Sundays. Even at 5:45 a.m. Even on Mother’s Day.
Shoen said he gets about three calls a day on average, and on busy days he may get 10 calls.
“Sometimes, though, someone may post something angry on the Internet with my phone number, and then I’ll get 100 calls in one day,” he said. “That’s happened probably three or four times.”
Shoen said he made his
number public so customers could call him directly with issues and comments on improving his business.
“My job is to give people certainty and help instead of just saying, ‘I’m a bigwig, so don’t bother me about it,’ ” he said. “It’s about being responsive and letting our customers know we’re listening.”
And from what his customers tell Shoen, their needs have changed.
To meet those demands, the self-moving and self-storage rental giant will focus on some of its newer programs this year.
Those programs include Collegeboxes, U-Haul Car Share and U-Box portable moving and storage. U-Haul introduced all three programs between 2007 and 2010.
Innovation
Shoen said his company needs to stay relevant in today’s marketplace. He calls the newer programs investments in the future.
» Collegeboxes, which UHaul acquired from Store to Door, ships boxes of students’ belongings to their college cities and delivers those boxes to dorm rooms on move-in day.
» U-Haul Car Share is a carrental service that functions mainly on college campuses. It’s a way for students who don’t come to school with a personal vehicle to get around.
» U-Box allows customers to ship containers of their belongings to wherever they’re moving, instead of using trucks or trailers.
“People want to move, but they don’t want to drive,” Shoen said. “Someone needed to come forward, to adapt to that.”
Professor Amy Ostrom of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University said there is a strong trend across industries to expand services, instead of product lines. That pattern is evident in UHaul’s service expansion, she said.
“In general, you have people who are going to be very busy, with very demanding lives, and it may be difficult to do-it-yourself in those different arenas,” she said. “There are some people who want to opt out of the do-it-yourself model and have more help from a company.”
Long history