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As North America’s largest moving and storage operator, AMERCO (UHAL) is a company that we’ve written about many times in the past, including our July 2021 Newsletter, in which we wrote about the company’s key business — U-Haul,
The name U-Haul is synonymous with “do-it- yourself” moving and storage. The company rents its distinctive orange and white U-Haul trucks and trailers and also offers self-storage units through a network of over 2,100 Company-operated retail moving stores and nearly 21,100 independent U-Haul dealers.
The company also sells U-Haul brand boxes, tape and other moving and self-storage products and services to customers through its distribution outlets and through its website.
AMERCO is a family-run business, founded by Leonard Samuel and Anna Mary Shoen in 1945, and is currently run by Edward Joe Shoen. Mr. Edward Shoen (one of Leonard’s twelve children) successfully led a coup in 1986 to take over the company after Leonard began to expand past the core U-Haul business into ventures such as item rentals. After taking control, Mr. Edward Shoen scaled the business back, shifting focus to the U-Haul sector once again by adding more than 80,000 trucks to the fleet. AMERCO eventually went public in 1994 for $1.73 (adjusted for stock splits) and in 2010, the company acquired Collegeboxes – a student summer storage and shipping provider. While over 90% of AMERCO’s revenue comes from their Moving and Storage Operating Segment (the segment that includes U-Haul), the company also offers Property and Casualty Insurance as well as Life Insurance.
We wrote about AMERCO in our July 2021 Special Situations Newsletter following insider purchases by both Edward Shoen and Mark Shoen (another son of Leonard’s, and currently a 10% owner) in a transaction by Willow Grove Holdings (which is primarily owned by the Shoen brothers) that totaled over $45 million. We wrote the following in our June 20th, 2021 Insider Weekends post: