Company struggles
This isn’t the first time UHaul has innovated to keep up with diverse consumer behaviors.
Shoen’s father, L.S. Shoen, founded U-Haul in 1945. It was the first nationwide do-it-yourself moving company, featuring one-way open-trailer rentals.
In 1949, U-Haul added tarptop trailers so customers could move in the rain. That model led to today’s van-type trailers.
In 1974, the company entered the self-storage business and opened retail centers.
In 1984, it introduced propane sales to its centers.
In 2002, U-Haul developed the eMove online marketplace, which encompasses Moving Help and the U-Haul Self-Storage Affiliate network. Moving Help is an online marketplace for customers and independent providers of moving and labor services.
Today, U-Haul is an almost ubiquitous brand name. There are about15,500 independent UHaul dealers. As of March 2012, U-Haul’s rental fleet consisted of about 106,000 trucks, 83,000 trailers and 33,000 towing devices.
U-Haul also operates 1,140
‘‘ Real change can’t be seen in 90 days or even a year sometimes. Heavy evaluation based on quick results causes arguably stupid behavior.”
Board chairman, president of Amerco, U-Haul’s parent self-storage locations in North America.
Amerco employs about 17,700 people throughout North America, with about 98 percent of them working in moving and storage operations.
U-Haul’s parent company closed fiscal 2012 with a common-stock price per share value of $105.51, according to the company’s 2012 annual report.
It hasn’t all been rosy for Joe Shoen, though. After gaining control of his father’s company in 1986, Shoen found himself in the middle of a family feud over company control.
Perhaps the most high-profile lawsuit Shoen faced was one his father filed against him concerning the company takeover.
L.S. Shoen claimed his son wrongfully sold shares of the company to friendly executives to maintain company control. In 1994, a jury awarded L.S. Shoen a $1.5 billion settlement, which was later reduced to about $460 million.
Joe Shoen filed a libel suit against his father, concerning comments his father made about him and the murder of Joe Shoen’s sister-in-law, Eva Shoen. Joe Shoen lost that suit.
Amerco indemnified the settlement award, pushing the company into bankruptcy in 2003. Nine months later, Joe Shoen steered Amerco out of bankruptcy.
Despite all the “trauma and drama” of doing business with his family members, Joe Shoen said he still supports familyrun businesses 100 percent because he believes they are at the core of the country’s freeenterprise system.
“I’m totally in favor as long as the family can agree that
Accomplishments
Joe Shoen counts among his greatest accomplishments heading U-Haul when it went public in 1993.
“One of the hardest parts was getting the family to go along with it, because they were in their comfort zones,” Shoen said.
The transition provided plenty of learning opportunities for Shoen. One lesson Shoen said he learned is that there is a “tyranny” in public business.
“There’s a paradigm in the U.S. between public ownership and quarterly reports,” Shoen said. “That may be good for accountants, but it isn’t good for really knowing what’s going on and making decisions that you’ll be happy about.”
Results come as a process and changes are made in building blocks, Shoen said.
“Real change can’t be seen in 90 days or even a year sometimes,” he said. “Heavy evaluation based on quick results causes arguably stupid behavior.”
Shoen refuses to check Amerco’s stock prices daily and doesn’t promise specific results in specific time frames.
“Instead, I promise shareholders that we’ll work on it,” he said.
When looking back on his years at U-Haul, Shoen gets choked up.
“Our goal is to make moving and storage services available and affordable,” he said. “When you do that, it contributes to people’s lives, and they re-patronize. I think we’re doing an incredible job at that, and I’m very proud to be associated with (U-Haul).”