#100 The Long Haul

A friend moves and I learn more about U-Haul

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The night before my friend Michael moved to Colorado, I stopped by his home to bid farewell. When I walked, a 15-foot U-haul truck was parked in front of his house, and several abandoned items were soaking in the humidity on the sidewalk. I found Michael doing a final sweep of his empty home. We hugged and said our goodbyes. Several friends have moved from Austin in the last two years. It took me by surprise when the first friend moved away, but slowly, I've made peace with people leaving. As Michael said a couple of weeks ago, "You've to re-up on friends every 4-5 wherever you are." As I was contemplating these lines on my walk that evening, a U-haul truck passed by me, and right behind it, a young woman crossed the street holding a table lamp - one that she likely had picked up from a friend who was moving (I had acquired a bar cart with golden metal leaves from Michael). I realized that the same scene unfolds daily in every block in Austin around this time of the year - particularly in Hyde Park, near the University of Texas, Austin campus. People drive away in U-hauls, and those still trapped in the viscous summer air scavenge through what has been left behind. 

I've noticed U-hauls everywhere since that evening - in parking lots, blocking the right turn at the end of my block, driving cautiously on the highway. Sometimes, I spot people unloading things; other times, the truck's contents are simply splayed out on the sidewalk. Every once in a while, I see a Penske truck or a Home Depot truck, but those sightings are few and far between. It's mostly U-hauls. This anecdotal observation is accurately reflected back in the market cap of the moving companies - The second biggest moving truck rental company, Penske ($4.8 bn), is way behind U-haul ($12.8 billion). U-Haul even has something called the U-Haul Index, which tracks moving trends across the U.S. If I were enforcing anti-trust laws in this country, I would start with the companies that have such broad reach that they have their own indexes used by economists and laymen - U-haul index, Zillow index, etc. 

I wanted to know more, so I picked up A Noble Function: How U-Haul Moved America by Luke Krueger, which details the beginnings and rise of U-haul from the 1940s to the 70s. It seems that Mr. Krueger was likely hired by a U-Haul heir to write this history, which comes through in the fairy tale lens that is applied to the U-Haul founder Leonard Shoen, but the book still offers a look into the strange, almost fictional world of the 40s and 50s United States. 

U-Haul was started by Leonard Shoen and his devout catholic wife, Anna Shoen, in Oregon in 1945. Mr Shoen returned from serving in the Second World War with the idea of a trailer rental business. The Shoen's built the trailers themselves and rented them out through dealers (any store willing to rent them out). The trailers were the size you could hitch to the back of a standard automobile. Before U-Haul, Mr Shoen recalls seeing people driving with all their belongings tied to the top of their car - often, the stack was the same size as the car that hauled it. U-Haul found success all across the West Coast right after the war. G.I.s deployed on the West Coast were enchanted by the coast and wanted to settle down in West Coast cities with their families. They ended up being some of U-hauls biggest customers. 

After their initial success, U-Haul started doing one-way rentals to anywhere in the country. The anecdote about how one-way rentals worked back then makes America of the 1950s seem like a little Tolkien village. U-haul sent away one-way movers with the request that they drop off the trailer at any dealer that would take them and continue to rent them out. The movers were given promotional material about U-haul - explaining to the dealers how the trailer rentals worked and an address to send back U-haul's share of the rental by post. All of this apparently worked really well except for a few delinquencies. 

U-haul kept growing and still made their own trailers. The next pivotal point, according to U-Haul lore, was the Fleet Owner Program, which was partly inspired by the papal encyclicals of Pope John XXIII. According to the book, the catholic church back then was ambivalent about communism - on one hand, they abhorred the atheism and rejection of private property, but they respected communism's compassion for workers and saw the appeal the idealogy held for workers. The encyclicals in those times recommended that business owners give ownership to the workers to incentivize them further. Anna and Leonard Shoen were Catholics, and U-Haul's early employees claim that this played a huge role in U-Haul employees being encouraged and incentivized to be part of the Fleet Owner Program. Through this program, U-Haul employees came to own fleets of U-Haul trailers that paid themselves back in the first couple of months of ownership. 

Why are there no modern competitors to U-Haul? Even in the low interest rate heydays of the 2010s, there were very few companies that put up a direct threat to U-Haul. For one, people don't really move as much these days compared to 1940-1970 in the USA. This is surprising to me since the popular myth, particularly if you spend too much time online, appears to be that people have too many options and travel a lot - never settling anywhere to make meaningful friends or relationships. In the 20 years after the Second World War, 20% of people moved annually, compared to around 9% in the 2010s. 

There were a couple of reasons why people moved so much after the war. First, America was doing really well and had twice the GDP of European nations. Second, the national roadways became a symbol of unencumbered American freedom. Eisenhower passed the Federal Highway Act in 1956. Jack Kerouc's On The Road, from which the author borrowed the title Noble Function, came out in 1957 and romanticized a nomadic life. Moving became a prominent part of the culture.

Another reason for U-Haul's endurance is that early entrants into a market get to set national and universal standards for a product or market. For example, U-Haul struggled with interstate trips because each state had different conventions for road tax to be paid for a trailer that was hitched to a car, and there were varying laws around what type of hitch could be used on a car. U-Haul created and passed the standards for these through state legislatures. On a side note, I wonder if contemporary mobility companies such as Uber and Lyft have been equally successful in passing legislation and setting standards? If not, what does it say about the health of the system? 

I was still making peace with Michael leaving when I watched Eyimofe, a Nigerian movie set in Lagos. The movie follows two unfortunate characters attempting to move from Lagos to Europe. One of the Letteboxd reviews of Eyimofe described the city of Lagos as "Manhattan on speed. Overcrowded, hustle and bustle and everyone dying to make it out of there; specifically to Europe." 

The United States is Lagos on speed. It has perhaps always thrived on people who are restless and itching to move - somewhere better, somewhere peaceful, maybe to follow a dream or maybe to just give up on dreams. After the second world war it thrived on people returning from the war wanting to start anew somewhere else, then later it thrived on immigrants from Asia and other parts of the world. Now, based on moving trends, it seems like the country runs on fumes. 

Back to staring at the U-haul index. Between 2015 and 2024, there has been a complete reversal of the direction in which people move. California and New York were top destinations for movers in 2015, with Texas and Florida being towards the bottom 10. In 2023, Texas is the number one destination for movers and California the least favored of the lower 48 states. While there are several reasons for this, such as housing costs, ultimately, it's a sign that my generation, the millennials, are getting old now. Some of my friends have found religion. They talk about it as if they are the first generation of humankind to suddenly become religious as they approach their mid-thirties. Some have become conservative. The amateur enthusiasm of both these groups is evident in how eager they are to talk about their newfound beliefs. 

What about Me? Now that Michael has left, I'm just looking for someone to play basketball in the park a couple of blocks away from my house. 

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I wrote about accumulating things as you move in Innumerable attachments

This Charming Rat was a flash fiction piece about my friend moving