U-Haul

U-Haul is a moving and relocation company founded in 1945 by Leonard Shoen and Anna Mary Carty, who started the business with a small trailer operation in Ridgefield, Washington. The company now operates more than 25,000 locations across all 50 U.S. states and Canadian provinces and employs nearly 20,000 team members. It is publicly traded.

The business combines a large vehicle fleet with a wide physical network. Its operations span fleet maintenance and management, logistics and moving operations, self-storage, and the running of a retail and partner network. For skilled workers, the relevant scale is the maintenance and upkeep of a rental fleet of trucks and trailers, alongside the servicing of storage sites and retail locations. U-Haul describes a continuous-improvement orientation toward maintaining its fleet, improving its locations, and making the moving process smoother for customers.

Customers rent trucks and trailers for do-it-yourself moves and rent self-storage units for their belongings. U-Haul also sells boxes and packing supplies, tow hitches for customer vehicles, and propane. The company positions itself as "the neighborhood resource" for people moving belongings from point A to point B, and it grew its network in part by partnering with local gas stations and independent businesses rather than relying on company-owned sites alone.

That approach has kept a local presence within a national operation. The company remains rooted in the community-based model that carried it from a garage-founded trailer business to a publicly traded enterprise, while concentrating on enabling do-it-yourself moves rather than full-service moving.