Charlie Bottle

U-Haul Skidding Out of Control?

Mac, yes there is some temporary business coming from a spike in forclosures. This mitigates the impact of lower purchases of houses but it is a lower number (I would guess perhaps 1-2 million forecloures while home sales are down 3-4 million form the peak). People are downsizing? Yes - they are getting rid of all the crap by selling it on ebay or simply junking it, the last think they need is a recurring expense in storage.


On Apr 03 01:58 AM mac.barron wrote:

> I don't dispute the author's disection of the financial state of
> the company, clearly there are a couple of red flags in that mess.
> I do have a different take on the business environment. Yes, housing
> is down, but that means a lot of people are moving from houses to
> rental property and also that a lot of people are downsizing andusing
> cheaper storage space. My guess is that the worse the economy gets
> the better this kind of company will do. As for # zagrebzagreb 's
> question about why the competition hasn't run U-Haul off the road?
> Easy: Because all of those companies (Budget, Pensky, Ryder, etc.)
> suck too.