Everyone knows what U-Haul is and what it does. Chances are you have probably seen one driving down the highway or maybe you have even used one. But do you know the story behind U-Haul? Do you know how this massive company tore a family apart?
The chances are unlikely that you know what truly happened with this company and its founding family. In 1945, a couple out of Ridgefield, Washington turned $5,000 into billions of dollars.
Leonard Shoen and Anna Mary Carty, a married couple out of Ridgefield, Washington, invested $5,000 into fixing trailers and renting them out. Shoen started by storing the trailers at his wife's family garage and renting them to customers such as gas stations to help transport materials and franchise his new business.
The company grew so large that it is now worth $3.3 billion. U-Haul is all over the United States and in some Canadian provinces. They started with very few trucks and have now grown to have almost 167,000 trucks, 120,000 trailers, and 43,000 towing devices. There is no denying that this company is widely successful and has grown to be massive, but for Leonard Shoen and Anna Mary Carty, this came at a cost. After their company grew massively and exploded in growth, their family fell apart.
Shoen had multiple marriages and ended up having 12 children. His children were pressured to join the company after they graduated from college. Some of Shoen's children gave up careers such as law practices, medical careers, and various others in order to help and become executives in the company.
Tensions mounted as the brothers, Sam, Joe, and Micheal, fought for powerful positions in the company and disagreed about the best direction for the businesses' future. Some of the sons, Joe and Mark, ventured off and left the company to create their own. As time went on, U-Haul started to unravel because it was going in too many directions at one time. The company lost millions of dollars and its debts grew. Thousands of U-Haul employees lost their jobs and the children who were still involved with the company became increasingly worried.
In 1986, Shoen's son Joe lead a coup and took over the company. After the company was handed over to Joe, things got even more out of hand.
Sam was guaranteed to have a life long job at U-Haul but quit shortly after Leonard Shoen was gone from the business because Sam and Joe couldn't get along. There were fights over shares and between many executives. Just when things couldn't have been worse, Sam's wife, Eva, was murdered in her Colorado home.
It was believed that Sam was actually the target and that Joe and Mark were the ones who killed her. Shoen put out a finder's fee to whoever found the killers, convinced that it was his sons and trying to prove it. Even though it turned out to not be them, their father did not believe them. Tensions and lawsuits soon exploded, tearing this family even further apart.
Shoen's sons still control a large majority of U-Haul today as do his grandchildren. But this company will never be the same after all the turmoil it went through.
