Are they going bankrupt? Just this week, a friend of my wife’s wanted to rent a 2-ton truck to move. He went to UHAUL, and the manager offerd two trucks-one had bad brakes, the other had a bad transmission! I have laso been noticing that the UHAUL trucks and trailors I see on the road look very beat-up and old-it’s as if the company hasn’t been buying new vehicles for years.
So, is UHAUL on the ropes? I heard years ago, that the sons of the founder of UHAUL are fightingn eachother in court, over their inheritance. Is this true?
Every U-Haul location I’ve ever been to has been some sort of franchisee, so the more appropriate question may be “Is U-Haul Corp. charging its franchisees so much that they can’t afford to upgrade equipment?”
I’ve never had a good experience with U-Hail. On the other hand, Ryder always treats me right.
Last time I drove a U-Haul rental, the damn thing’s power steering was on the blink, so every turn was a good upper-body workout.
U-Haul has to be one of the worst companies I’ve ever dealt with. One time I was pulled over and ticketed because the truck they rented to me hadn’t been inspected in a year. Fortunately, the cop followed me back to the store so I was able to tell U-Haul to deal with the ticket. All in all they were completely unapologetic, and I’ll bet that truck was back on the street in an hour.
If that company folded tomorrow I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
My own experiences with U-Haul have also been bad. When I moved out to Texas from San Diego several years ago, we got a truck that not only did not have working air-conditioning, but had some kind of problem where the passenger side of the cab got incredibly hot, especially in the area where your feet would be.
We got the “it’s the only truck left” excuse when we complained.
Ryder and Penske did seem to have their act together and have nicer trucks, but their prices reflected it. Conversely, the U-Haul in Austin, TX where I dropped the truck off had what looked to be newer trucks and were better organized.
I think a lot of it has to do with the rotating stock of trucks and any given vehicle lot could have newer or older trucks at any given time. I personally think U-Haul must just have lower standards for their franchise outfits and they are probably cheaper than the others so any idiot can start one. I never heard they were going under, however
U-Haul was the subject of one of those expose shows some years ago, and I see things haven’t changed much.
They charge by the day, and if you blow a tire or the rig breaks down for some other reason that holds you from getting it back before closing, they can hit you for another day’s charge, and maybe for a charge for an unscheduled day. Or not, but if the thing breaks and you still need to get your hauling done, you’re going to need the truck.
I used Budget this past weekend and found they wanted $69/day plus $0.69 per mile. Had I used the truck during the week instead, I could have had it for “only” $29/day; I don’t know about the per-mile charge. And you do pay for the gas, which is burned at about 3 mpg.
:smack:
I just rented a trailer from U-Haul. The trailer itself was fine (old, but mechanically sound), but dealing with the U-Haul bureaucracy was a nightmare.
See, my problem was that I wanted to rent the trailer for six days for a family camping trip, returning it to the same place I rented it. U-Haul generally works on two types of rentals:[ul][li]In-Town - 24 hours or less, pick up and drop off at same locationOne-Way - Pick up and drop off at separate locations. You tell them the two locations, and they look up in their book how many days you have to make that trip.[/ul]As you can see, the rental I desired didn’t fit into either of those categories. Cue ominous music…[/li]
I started calling around. Most local U-Haul franchises simply said “No, we don’t do that,” but one said that I needed to call the Regional Office. I did that, and was referred to the Corporate HQ. Corporate HQ referred me right back to the Regional Office.
The RO finally made me a reservation, and told me that I’d need to call back in a few days to find out exactly where to pick the trailer up. I called back in a few days and was given a local U-Haul Center. The person then mentioned in passing that I needed to talk to the manager of that U-Haul Center to make sure they had a trailer for me.
Huh? So, I have a reservation, but then again I don’t yet? “Yeah, basically. You just need to talk to the manager - his name’s Chris.”
I went in and talked in person to Chris, and without really checking anything told me that it would be fine. I called back a few days later to re-confirm, and the guy I talked to looked me up: “Yup, 4x6 open trailer, pickup on August 11.”
“That’s a six-day rental, right?” I asked.
“No, this just says one day. But six should be fine if you talked to the manager about it, so don’t worry.”
When I went to pick it up (this is on a Sunday), they were very busy and had all of one person working the counter. I waited in line for something like 30 minutes and was extremely relieved to find that everything about the reservation seemed to be in order.
When we were actually hooking it up to my truck, it turned out that I had been given bad info about what wiring connector I needed, and that I had to get another adapter to go from 4-wire flat (what I had off of my truck) to the four loose wires on the trailer. The guy hooking me up went inside and got one, and told me, “You’re supposed to buy this, but I’m pissed at the guy at the desk so I’m just going to give it to you.”
Hey, whatever. It worked, and I fled the scene, trailer and six-day rental paperwork in hand.
Why U-Haul, you might ask? Simply put, I couldn’t find anybody else to rent a trailer from. All other trailer rental places (and there aren’t many) had in-town-only restrictions on their rentals, and I figured that would make explaining a breakdown in Kings Canyon National Park a bit difficult.
After I actually got the damn thing, I had no problems at all.
I also had a terrible U-Haul experience. It’s a long story, but the core of the problem was that I had to deal with three entities: the national reservations center, the local reservations center, and the actual U-Haul location where I was picking up the truck. There seemed to be no communication among these three branches at all.
The representative at the national number told me the local reservation guy would give me a confirmation number. The local guy hung up on me before giving it to me. When I called the national number back to complain about this and to try to obtain this number, another representative claimed that U-Haul did not use reservation/confirmation numbers, that my name alone would be sufficient. The U-Haul pick-up location had no record of the THREE times I had confirmed with the two reservation centers, and also had no record of the TWO times I had confirmed with THEM SPECIFICALLY since I had reserved it. If I continue to tell this story my head will explode, so I will just say that if U-Haul is in trouble, it is richly deserved due to their own highly inefficient organization. YMMV.
And yes, the truck, when I finally got it, was badly maintained.
Echoing prior comments……
I just rented a trailer from them a week ago to move. All I can say is, what a pain in the a**. I spent about, and this is not an exaggeration, 8 hours on hold trying to get an actual human to talk to. It seems that the problem was that my local agent had booked more reservations than he could fill. [long ugly story] I finally got a trailer the day after I wanted it, and about 35 miles away from where I was supposed to pick it up . Once I got the trailer everything was fine, but I can think of no other company for which I have a lower regard. I don’t know what is going on with this company, but I would not be surprised to see them fold, and part of me hopes that they do.
Not too many U-Haul fans here, are there?
Me either.
A few weeks ago, I was helping my dad move into another house across town. We went to the local U-Haul (again, the only place in town) with a reservation. They had the (only) truck parked out front and everything seemed good to go. The truck was old and looked poorly maintained. I wasn’t too sure we were really going to be able to use it. Turns out I was right. We got in the truck, turned the key and… nothing. The battery was dead.
The manager tried to boost the truck off for almost an hour. We finally gave up and decided to rent a trailer instead. There was some confusion about canceling the contract and renting the trailer… blah… blah… I sat outside and drank a Dr Pepper while dad sorted everything out. We finally got the trailer hooked up to our truck (after buying a hitch :mad: ) and were leaving when the dead U-Haul decided to to start. The manager asked if we would like to use the truck after all. “Hell, no!”
I’m just glad this was an in-town move. If we had to travel any farther, I’m sure we would have gone somewhere else. Live and learn, I guess.
More UHAUL-hating here. On more than one occasion, I’ve been stiffed by them being overbooked. One time, I needed to just move a trailer across town, and didn’t have access to a truck, so I called and reserved a pickup with a hitch. “oh, all our trucks have hitches”, the lady on the phone tells me. Silly me doesn’t check to make sure she wasn’t full of it when I pick up the truck. Turns out she’s full of it, so I drive back and expect to pick up the hitch (there was a receiver on the truck), and they tell me that the hitch is 10 bucks extra. An actual company that doesn’t have their head up their ass would have 1) told the truth about the truck in the first place, 2) given me the truck I reserved for the price they quoted me, and 3) if there was a screwup on something as simple as a trailer hitch, they’d comp me one for my troubles. That small gesture (which would have cost them nothing – think about the wear and tear on a frickin trailer hitch in a single day) would have made me willing to overlook points 1 and 2 because it would have made me feel like they were willing to try to do the right thing, but instead they had to stick it to me. Screw them.
And don’t get me started on their misleading “$x for the weekend” pricing (for those who don’t know, this means $x/day for the weekend).
I think I actually benefited from Uhaul’s incompetence. I rented a truck to move all of my stuff from Baltimore to Boston. The trip went well, but we got to Boston so late at night that we decided to drop the keys and contract off in the local Uhaul’s drop-box. My dad drove the short distance between my new apartment and the Uhaul place, and managed to put a small dent in the side of the truck.
I called the next day to make sure that the insurance I’d purchased would cover the damage. The Uhaul representative just said something like, “Truck? Oh, yeah, we did get a truck last night, but it’s already been sent to the next location.” and then, “Nope, we didn’t notice any damage, I guess someone will catch it and fix it eventually. Don’t worry about it.”
I rented a U-Haul truck 2 years ago. One of the smaller in-town movers.
The water temp redlined after about 3 miles driving but it had a full radiator. As I only had to drive about 5 miles I just continued driving it.
Also, there was a set of moving
blankets and a dolly in the back that were supposed to have plastic seals on their storage brackets and if the seals were broken that was an additional rental fee. So the seals were never there when I got the truck and they tried to make me pay for it, but a lot of bitching on my part got the fees dropped.
I’ll use another company next time.
I want to rent a truck sometime in the next few months. I’ve avoided considering U-Haul because I’ve heard so many bad things about them. There was some incident years back that I no longer remember that really turned me away from them. On the other hand, I’ve heard only good things about Ryder.
I think I heard on the radio last week or a couple weeks ago that Penske (and therefore Ryder) was in financial trouble. Looming bankruptcy? Has anyone heard of this?
IIRC Penske recently aquired Rollins another truck rental/leasing co. We leased our trucks from Rollins and we had lots of problems, could be that Penske is choking on their purchase of an already floundering company.
Bad brakes, and bad transmissions eh?
Sounds like something a lawsuit would fix.
Hmmm… my ups and downs…
When getting out of the military in Texas to move back to Michigan, rented a U-Haul trailer. I reserved the time and location at the National (or Regional?) number, picked up the trailer on time, and it worked perfectly. No problems whatsoever. BUT… two days into the trip, I received a phone call (well, the answering machine did) from U-Haul wondering where I was and why I didn’t come to pick up the trailer and they would charge my credit card for it! It was easy to straighten out, but duh!, what about communication.
I had a trailer hitch installed at U-Haul. It was the most inexpensive around and worked perfectly.
I fill up my LP tanks for the grill at U-Haul. Sure, 4 gallons are almost $16, but they’re close and I don’t have to swap tanks (I keep my own).
The trailer rental from West Chicago to Detroit was a pain – the reservation wasn’t there, but they accomodated me, albeit it VERY slowly. I got stuck in Chicago traffic which was what I didn’t want to do.
Finally, I needed to pick up some house doors at the door store. U-Haul let me walk in right off the street and rent a someone else’s U-Haul when I promised I’d only be an hour. Paid the $20, and they didn’t even gig me for gas or mileage. And I got the truck back quickly.
I wouldn’t consider a U-Haul truck for a long trip though – they’re just to unsafe-looking.
Overall, I’m generally satisfied (not pissed nor ecstatic) with the U-Haul services I use.
Airman and I rented a trailer from U-Haul yesterday. This morning, Airman noticed that the tires were coming apart, they were so worn. We’ve been trying to get someone to come out to replace the tires.
The bad thing is, the company is being a jerk about this. We’ve got the trailer (which is otherwise fine) for seven days, but this tire incident is costing us a day, and they’re not willing to consider allowing us to extend our rental by a day. And they may not even be all that willing to fix it before we leave, but if a tire blows while we’re on the road, they’ll compensate us for it.
Wankers.
Robin
I’ll join the chorus with my list of U-Haul horror stories. First, there was my move from New Britain, CT, back down to NYC last summer. I reserved a truck online, called to confirm the reservation and all should have been fine. Then, of course, the day of the rental there were no trucks to be found at the rental place (after waiting in line there an hour on a stinking hot August day). The “manager” there was less than helpful and resented when we called U-Haul’s customer service #. He kept interrupting the call, telling us he can’t do this or that and that calling them won’t help. It ultimately didn’t help that much, but at least we stirred up some trouble for him. Then we had to get down to Waterbury to pick up a truck finally. Naturally, this took a chunk out of an afternoon we really needed. We complained later to U-Haul HQ and they sent gift certificates for $50 on a future move. Just try getting anyone to accept them btw. They all say that they weren’t issued by a store and they’re no good for this or that, but we got to use them this past week.
Now I moved from NYC upstate to Watertown by Lake Ontario. They called me 2 days before the move to say that they were running “on a 12-to-24-hour delay and apologized for any inconvenience.” Gee, we have to load up a 24’ truck—who needs it on time? Also, we reserved a truck with a hitch to pull an SUV behind it, but of course they didn’t have it. I called their HQ to complain about this and they told me where in Dutchess Co. I could get one of those. Call them the next day and guess what? No hitch. So I had to drive the 6 hours behind the U-Haul. Ugh.
Got a late start, so we had to overnight in the town of Catskill. We were in a parking lot across from the Days Inn there and had both gotten out of our respective vehicles to discuss what to do. My friend put the brake on and the air brake. 30 seconds later he glances over his shoulder and sees…the U-Haul rolling away! Headed right for a ditch with all our stuff. It was insured to the hilt too…too bad it didn’t just blow. Anyway, he ran and caught up with it, jumped in and reapplied the brake. Would’ve made for amazing video.
Ryder by comparison has been great. Unlimited mileage too if I recall correctly. When the ramp for hand trucks wasn’t working for the one move, they sent someone to us who repaired it on the spot. There’s no way U-Haul would do that. Basically, you get what you pay for. I suspect U-Haul gets their return business by doling out apologetic gift certificates, which requires people to use them again to redeem them…