The rent a car market is highly developed today, offering complete solutions for all customer patterns. From ordinary cars to business limousines, to minivans, vans, minibuses or any type of vehicle that a customer may require.
The beginnings of this type of business has confused with the begginings of car manufacturing industry. In the early twentieth century, 1916 to be exact, a car service owner, Joe Saunders, offered for rent his own car, a Ford T model. Car lovers remenber the Ford T as the first series manufactured car in history and it couldn’t be another car to start the rental industry as well.
The Ford T model of John Saunders was rented for business man that came form other cities. The owner established a 10 cents per mile fee, covering the wear and repair costs that came inevitably after giving others his car to be used.
John Saunders quickly realized that this business can be extremely profitable, given the insufficiency this market niche had at that time, so he began to invest in the purchase of new vehicles and to expand services to other U.S states and cities. Thus, until 1925, Saunders’s business had prospered, his car renting services were being present in 21 cities, reaching a 1 million dollars gross worth.
As any profitable business quickly creates competition, Walter L. Jacobs developed it’s own line of car rentals but offered at the beginning the same Ford T model like Saunders. By 1923, Jacobs reached an impressive turnover of 1 million dollars becoming the main competitor for Joe Saunders.
But Walter Jacobs would be the one who would lead the industry to the next level. In the mid '20s he was to meet with John Hertz, owner of the Yellow Cab Manufacturing Company of Chicago. Hertz had to buy Jacobs’s company and after that General Motors bought Hertz’s business naming the car rental division "Hertz Drive-Ur-Self System."
During the Second World War, in conjunction with the expansion of the railway system of theUnited Statesthe car rental service had developed due to Extension Railway Company Inc. Rent a car companies cooperated with Extension Railways to provide travelers a booked car when they were arriving at their destinations. The bookings were made at a telephone post at the station when their railway line had to leave.
However, the industry boom occurred after the war. Then were born rent a car companies like, Thrifty Dollar, Enterprise, National Car Rental (which mentions one of the founders as John Saunders, a character mentioned above), Avis, rent a car companies that today are spread across the world, with hundreds of stations on all continents .
Blog - Rent a Car, Romania.
