U-Haul is the leading truck and trailer rental company for do-it-yourself moving in North America. The company started in 1945 by renting moving trailers that customers hitched to their cars. By 1959, U-Haul rented trucks to customers through a network of independent dealers and opened its own retail locations by 1973. As of March 2023 (fiscal year end), the company operates the largest network of rental locations including 2.2k company operated stores and 21.3k independent dealers. U-Haul is also one of the largest self-storage operators in the U.S. with over 56M sq. ft. of rentable storage space. The company groups these two segments together in its segment reporting under Moving and Storage, which represents 95% of revenues and 97% of operating earnings.
Thanks. I purposely don't discuss valuation (I've mentioned this before in other posts) because I don't think it's that helpful, especially after some time has passed. I'd rather discuss how to understand the business.
Good article. The only point of agreement that I have with you is that U-Haul's scaled dealer infrastructure provides tremendous barriers to entry. I think that you take the data of declining movers rate a little too lightly. Movement is often a result of major life events like marriage, a new job, birth of children, and sometimes death. Americans have been moving from one residence to another less and less over the years as a result of various factors. Just to name two that quickly come to mind:
1. lower marriage rates: ~80% of all households were comprised of married couples in 1949 vs. ~50% as of 2020. The less these events take place, the less movement will be generated as a result of marriages.
2. increasing share of women participating in the workforce: ~30% of married households in the U.S. were dual-income vs. 50% today. Moving decisions become incrementally harder to make when they affect two as opposed to one person.
Also, I'm not sure that COVID provides good indication of what the future of movement/migration might be. As remote-work accommodations gain greater acceptance amongst employers, getting a new job becomes less of a reason to move residence.
U-Haul has been able to grow decently over the years due to share gain and rental penetration. On a forward basis, it's worth thinking about how much of these two levers they've already exhausted before being squarely correlated to the actual number of moves that take place in the U.S.
Lastly, I'm not sure that scaled economies shared (you can track this by dividing rental revenue by gross equipment PP&E over the years - it's been declining, maybe intentionally?) is a sound formula to use in the face of structurally declining end-market demand. With ROIC of ~11% on avg. from 2012-2019, it's worth asking if that's an acceptable starting base from which to make projections. As businesses grow larger, the opportunity set shrinks. With the current capital allocation policy, I'm not sure that investors are being compensated for the risk of what's always an unknown future, though in U-Haul's case quite predictable.
Great article! Also, shares have moved nicely lately. Congrats if you participated in the move.
Great post. How do you think about maintenance spend in the rental business and how much catch up does the company need to do? What has management said about their pricing philosophy?
Thanks. I think maintenance spend is going to be elevated for a while because (1) labor costs are up, and (2) the company said that they're behind 9k trucks as of the end of 22. It's going to take many quarters to catch up to that number and normalize the fleet. In terms of pricing, the company tries to be competitive, maybe even better vs. the competition, especially when you factor in the cost to pick-up and drop-off rentals. They said that they're sometimes surprised to see how much pricing has increased for the competition as of late.
No mention of valuation?
Thanks. I purposely don't discuss valuation (I've mentioned this before in other posts) because I don't think it's that helpful, especially after some time has passed. I'd rather discuss how to understand the business.
Good article. The only point of agreement that I have with you is that U-Haul's scaled dealer infrastructure provides tremendous barriers to entry. I think that you take the data of declining movers rate a little too lightly. Movement is often a result of major life events like marriage, a new job, birth of children, and sometimes death. Americans have been moving from one residence to another less and less over the years as a result of various factors. Just to name two that quickly come to mind:
1. lower marriage rates: ~80% of all households were comprised of married couples in 1949 vs. ~50% as of 2020. The less these events take place, the less movement will be generated as a result of marriages.
2. increasing share of women participating in the workforce: ~30% of married households in the U.S. were dual-income vs. 50% today. Moving decisions become incrementally harder to make when they affect two as opposed to one person.
Also, I'm not sure that COVID provides good indication of what the future of movement/migration might be. As remote-work accommodations gain greater acceptance amongst employers, getting a new job becomes less of a reason to move residence.
U-Haul has been able to grow decently over the years due to share gain and rental penetration. On a forward basis, it's worth thinking about how much of these two levers they've already exhausted before being squarely correlated to the actual number of moves that take place in the U.S.
Lastly, I'm not sure that scaled economies shared (you can track this by dividing rental revenue by gross equipment PP&E over the years - it's been declining, maybe intentionally?) is a sound formula to use in the face of structurally declining end-market demand. With ROIC of ~11% on avg. from 2012-2019, it's worth asking if that's an acceptable starting base from which to make projections. As businesses grow larger, the opportunity set shrinks. With the current capital allocation policy, I'm not sure that investors are being compensated for the risk of what's always an unknown future, though in U-Haul's case quite predictable.
Great article! Also, shares have moved nicely lately. Congrats if you participated in the move.
Suggest you spend September 1 in Boston to gauge UHAL's market share. Every tenth vehicle seemed to be a U-Haul.
Great post. How do you think about maintenance spend in the rental business and how much catch up does the company need to do? What has management said about their pricing philosophy?
Thanks. I think maintenance spend is going to be elevated for a while because (1) labor costs are up, and (2) the company said that they're behind 9k trucks as of the end of 22. It's going to take many quarters to catch up to that number and normalize the fleet. In terms of pricing, the company tries to be competitive, maybe even better vs. the competition, especially when you factor in the cost to pick-up and drop-off rentals. They said that they're sometimes surprised to see how much pricing has increased for the competition as of late.
Scaled economies shared or is that a stretch?