But Joe held firmly on to control and kept U-Haul alive by concentrating on the mundane, day-to-day details of its core self-moving business.

And they nearly did, hindering the company's ability to borrow money, attract talent and forge partnerships. U-Haul only recently escaped from the quagmire of family infighting, settling the last of the litigation in 2012.Īll of the distractions should have driven U-Haul into the ground. There were allegations of financial shenanigans, which were followed by a bankruptcy filing. was manic-depressive he killed himself in 1999. told FORBES in 1994 that Joe was mentally ill. later accused Joe and his younger brother Mark of being involved in the murder of their sister-in-law. Having lost faith in his father's ability to run the business, Joe wrested away control of Amerco in 1986, unleashing a torrent of litigation and reputational warfare L.S. 'L.S.'), and mother, Anna Mary, founded in 1945-have been at the center of one of the messiest family feuds in American history. His family and U-Haul-which his father, Leonard Samuel (a.k.a.

(Don't believe us? Call him at 60.) He credits the direct line with such innovations as a box designed for flat-screen televisions, 24/7 access to U-Haul's storage units and printed instructions for customers on how to safely connect and disconnect trailers.įrankly, a few calls from enraged customers in the middle of the night are nothing compared with what Shoen has already endured for this company. Not only did he not change his number, but eight years later he still claims to respond to every call-although sometimes via e-mail or text-and now insists that all U-Haul general managers post their cellphone numbers in their stores and on the perimeter gates and print them on their business cards. Most CEOs would have had their assistant set up another line minutes after the show aired.

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