Which truck rental company is the most plesant to work with on a daily basis?

does anyone have contact information for becoming a new dealer
(especially Penske)

Aloha bjvan,

I'll be watching this thread for responses.

I've not had any experience with any franchise truck companies, but am curious what others have to say.

__________________
Stoho

"Be kind whenever possible; it is always possible."

pleasant truck rental company? That's an oxymoron if I ever heard one!

Actually we have U-Haul's here, and the local U-Haul employees we work with are wonderful. So I guess it would depend on the truck rental employees that you deal with on a day-to-day basis in whatever part of the country you are in. After all, it's the people who make the company, pleasant or otherwise.

Trucks can either be a decent profit center or a resource drain. Like Lisa said if the distribution center is good then you will have less headaches. The more income you produce for them, the more responsive they will be to your issues. Also, not all rental companies focus on local moves. There is the theory that trucks produce renters. I am not sure that is the case.

During the rent up phase when there is down time in the office truck rental income is nice to have. As you become more occupied and the office/building load increases creating truck rental income can detract from the core business of storage. I have run numbers several times on truck programs and only a couple of times found that they produce a profit. A time analysis vs income usually comes up negative. My personal feeling is to allot this time to creating storage customers and repeat users.

I am a UHaul dealer here in Cashiers, NC. It is a royal pain, but the people here need the rental trucks, and I would rather that they come here than to another business, possibly a storage property. The profits do justify the amount of work that goes into the UHaul side of the business. Uhaul does all maintenance on their trucks and trailers, and I am told that Budget and Penske expect you to do a good bit of the maintenance. This would cut your profits quite a bit, which is why we are with UHaul.

I don't like the truck rental business at all, but if your AFM is good, it's not so bad. But again, if they don't get the UHaul stuff from me, they will somewhere else, so....

I also am not sure that we get any storage business from UHaul, but we do sell boxes and packing supplies to UHaul customers and storage customers.

Astro

I actually tracked the rentals we got directly as a result of having U-Haul here last month, and we rented a total of 12 units out of 52 that we would not have rented without having a truck rental program of some sort here.

We rented one yesterday morning as a matter of fact. Here's how it went....

Customer comes into the store to inquire about the truck rate to Melbourne, FL. He's going home to live with his parents for 4 months while he takes a higher level firefighter class that he needs for a promotion here. So he's packing up everything he owns and putting it in a U-Haul truck and taking it to Melbourne to put in his parents' garage for 4 months. Then he's coming back to Orlando to work and renting a truck back to bring all his furniture back with him.

I asked him, since he's coming back in 4 months, does his furniture need to make the round trip to Melbourne too? After looking at the one way truck price, plus the price of gas at 8 mpg that these trucks get, and multiplying it by 2 for the trip back, he could rent a 10 x 10 storage room here for less money for 4 months, plus I'm sure make his parents a lot happier to see him then if he was taking over their garage for 4 months.

So he rented the unit, and his furniture is happily residing here for the next 4 months.

That's probably not what U-Haul would have recommended, but if you talk to your truck rental customers and offer them storage solutions, you can generate quite a few rentals, besides the obvious ones of people just needing storage when they have to move.

In addition, we have people just walk in the door to rent a U-Haul and in chatting with them while entering their info in the computer, find out they are renting a truck to move into one of our competitor's storage units.....and believe you me, if they haven't already signed the lease at our competitor, they quickly get sold on the idea of renting storage with us instead. Especially with the convenience of dropping off the truck here after they are done loading their storage room here.

We don't make a huge commission off the U-Haul Trucks, but as Astro said the profits do justify the amount of work that goes into it.....and I think we would miss the storage rentals they generate if they were gone.....and yes I would agree the whole truck rental program is a royal pain.

Almost everyone moving into storage, with the exception of those with pick-up trucks and lots of time, need a truck to move. That's really the bottom line...do you want people in need of storage to go elsewhere to get their trucks...particularly if it's elsewhere that also has storage???

I almost forgot about that part.....almost everyone that comes in to get a U-Haul truck or trailer, even if they have no interest in storage, buys at least a few boxes, and some buy a whole lot of boxes and packing supplies.

The other benefit of having a truck rental program, is that you are listed in the Yellow Pages under that trucking company. Our phone # and address are listed in the Yellow Pages under U-Haul, and also the internet, so people call us thinking they are calling U-Haul, and you can give them directions to come on over for their packing supplies (or storage).

They are all sweet talk and helpful until their trucks are on your property then they could careless. I have 15 parking spaces till I took on Penske now I can't fit my own car in the parking lot let alone a customers car or moving van. When I complained to Penske they would increase my drop offs and redirted my paying reservations to another property. Finaly when my owners had chewed me out for the 12 time in the one month we have had Penske, I wrote an email to their head office! Today I got my response, Penske is pulling their trucks from my location! I have never been so relieved. You make no money from their trucks and they use you like free parking, it is not worth the money. If anyone needs more info about how bad Penske is please let me know, I will help. I have been in storage for 10 years and have never had such a hard time working with anybody! Stay away from Penske!

Interesting post. I have been courting Penske for months now about a dealership. They finally said they would be giving me a dealership 3 weeks ago. Filled out all of the paperwork, and purchased the required workers comp policy for our managers.

Now they are questioning our manager's comittment to renting trucks, and wheter we have enough parking???? Shouldn't they have made up their minds before promising us a dealership.

Looking back over the last few months, it has always been about what we are going to do for Penske, nothing about what they are going to do for us.

I have a large facility, and we are 94% occuppied. Now I am questing why I ever wanted a truck rental operation to start with.

Well as I said before, my only experience with truck rentals is with U-Haul, previously as a U-Haul employee managing one of their storage faciities, and now as a dealer at a non U-Haul storage facility.

We don't have a problem with them overloading us with trucks. We have 661 units, are 97% full, but we have a very high turnover rate, moving in and out around 100 units a month. We have 2-14' and 1-17' truck that live here, and we get one way trucks when we need them. So basically I devote 3 parking spaces to U-Haul, and we park a one-way in the back of the facility if we get one now and then, but it's usually only here for a day or so as we only get them when we have a reservation for them. When I started here last July, there was only 1 truck that lived here, I asked for more and now have 3, which is just right for our needs.

Most of our customers here in the Orlando metro area need a truck of some sort to move in or out of the facility. A good many of the truck rental dealerships are at storage facilities. Budget is at Public Storage, Penske at a lot of others, and U-Haul everywhere else, in addition to having storage at the U-Haul Centers themselves.

It's not rocket science to figure out that if our storage customers need a truck, I would rather they pick it up here then go to a storage competitor to get their truck.

I get a fair number people picking up U-Haul trucks here with the plan of going to a storage competitor to get their storage. Once they walk in the door to get the U-Haul truck, I can usually get the storage rental too.

I don't know how Penske is to deal with from a dealer perspective, but if you learn the U-Haul program, it's really easy to integrate the truck rentals in with your storage program. And the customers are thrilled to be able to take care of everything all with one stop and quickly. I do not believe we would be as successful in our storage or packaging sales without the 3rd leg of the triangle..the truck rentals.