District Court for trademark infringement, claiming that U-Haul 'improperly and unlawfully' used the word 'pods' to describe its U-Box product. In 2012, another moving and storage company, PODS, sued U-Haul in U.S. The filing did not include or affect U-Haul operations. AMERCO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2003 and emerged in March 2004. The Shoen family, currently led by chairman and president Edward 'Joe' Shoen, owns about 40% of the company through their AMERCO holding company. In 1999, 83-year-old Leonard Shoen suffered fatal injuries when he crashed into a telephone pole near his Las Vegas, Nevada, home. The takeover sparked a major family dispute that led to a $461 million judgment in favor of Leonard Shoen and others.

Family squabbling over the U-Haul empire turned to physical confrontations between some of his children at company meetings, even before the 1986 takeover. Shoen transferred all but 2% of control to his children when two of them, Edward and Mark, launched a successful takeover of the business in 1986. Distracted to some extent by growing his business, Shoen took time for multiple marriages and eventually had a total of 12 children, each of whom he made stockholders. He developed one-way rentals and enlisted investors as partners in each trailer as methods of growth.īy 1955, there were more than 10,000 U-Haul trailers on the road, and the brand was nationally known. He began building rental trailers and splitting the fees for their use with gas station owners whom he franchised as agents. In 1945, at the age of 29, Leonard Shoen co-founded U-Haul with his wife, Anna Mary Carty, in the town of Ridgefield, Washington, with an investment of $5,000. The livery used on rented vehicles is widely recognized, primarily consisting of white and a thick horizontal orange stripe, in addition to a large state- or province-themed picture, known as SuperGraphics. The company rents trucks, trailers, and other pieces of equipment, but many U-Haul centers and dealerships also provide self storage units, moving boxes, packing supplies, LPG (propane) refueling, hitch and trailer wiring installation, and carpet cleaners, among other services.īecause of the company's ubiquity (there are over 17,000 active dealers across the country) the name is sometimes used as a genericized trademark to refer to the services of any rental company. The Shoen family currently owns, both directly and indirectly, about 55 percent of the publicly traded stock corporation. U-Haul is owned by AMERCO, a holding company which also operates Amerco Real Estate, Republic Western Insurance, and Oxford Life Insurance.