Leonard Shoen
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Leonard Samuel "Sam" Shoen (1916–1999) was an American entrepreneur who founded the U-Haul truck and trailer organization in Ridgefield, Washington. After growing up in the farm belt of the United States during the Great Depression, he envisioned the market for rental vehicles for families who wished to avoid the expense of professional transfer and storage companies and move themselves around the country.
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[edit] Youth, education
Sam Shoen was born near McGrath, Minnesota, on 29 February 1916. His father, Samuel J. Shoen, moved the family to Oregon in 1923 to farm the Willamette Valley near Shedd. The Shoens were ethnically Scottish and English, and Sam's mother Sophie was of Swiss and French descent. The younger Shoen worked his way through Oregon State College by running a chain of beauty parlors and barber shops in Corvallis and nearby Albany, and later at Camp Adair north of Corvallis and at the Hanford Reservation in Washington. Sam earned a B.Sc. in General Science (a pre-med degree) from OSC in 1943[1], and entered the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland. Shoen was suspended from medical school during his fourth year, and never returned. He served in the U.S. Navy as a Hospital Apprentice First Class in Bayview, ID and Seattle, WA, and was given a medical discharge in 1945 for rheumatic fever.[2] [3] After starting the U-Haul Company, Shoen earned an LL.B. at the Northwestern College of Law in Portland in 1955.[4]
[edit] Developing U-Haul
In 1945, at the age of 29, Shoen co-founded U-Haul with his wife, Anna Mary Carty (1922-1957), in Ridgefield, WA, just north of Vancouver. Anna Mary was the mother of Shoen's first six children. The company was started with an investment of $5,000. He began building rental trailers at the Carty Ranch in Ridgefield, owned by his parents-in-law,[3] and splitting the fees for their use with gas station owners whom he franchised as agents. These early deals were based on little more than a wink and a nod. He developed one-way rentals and enlisted investors as partners in each trailer as methods of growth[citation needed]. In 1951, Shoen reorganized the U-Haul Trailer Rental Company under a new holding company, ARCOA (Associated Rental Companies of America).[3]
By 1955, there were more than 10,000 U-Haul trailers on the road and the brand was nationally known. The corporate offices were in Portland, until a 1967 relocation to Phoenix, AZ.[3] While distracted to some extent by growing his business, Shoen also managed multiple marriages after the death of his first wife of heart disease, and eventually had a total of 14 children, each of whom he made a stockholder. Shoen married Suzanne Gilbaugh in 1958, and they had five more children.[3] Some observers say that Shoen saw it as his duty to confer upon his children the fruits of his labors, others say it was to avoid taxes. In either case, he had transferred all but 2% of control to his children when 2 of them, Edward and Mark launched a successful takeover of the business in 1986. "Had Leonard Shoen spent five hundred dollars for a lawyer in 1950," said one associate, "none of the rest would have followed." [1]
[edit] World Trade Center Casino
Mr. Shoen formed the Amerco Enterpreneurial Institute Inc., which purchased the Chaparral in 1996 at 925 E. Desert Inn Road in Las Vegas, Nevada, renovating it into the World Trade Center Casino. When it was discovered that two of Mr. Shoen's closest advisers were convicted felons, he lost a long and contentious battle to obtain a gaming license for the property from the Nevada Gaming Control Board in 1998. He later withdrew his application.
[edit] Family feuds
Family squabbling over the U-Haul empire turned to physical confrontations between some of his children at company meetings, even before the 1986 takeover. The takeover sparked a major family dispute that led to a $461 million judgment in favor of Leonard Shoen and others.
On 4 October 1999, 83-year old Leonard Shoen suffered fatal injuries when he crashed into a utility pole near his Las Vegas, Nevada home in what was ruled by the Clark County coroner's office as a suicide. [2] Shoen was survived by his fifth wife, Carol, and all his children.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ Private communication with the Oregon State University Alumni Office on 21-Feb-2012.
- ^ L.S. Shoen, You and Me, AMERCO Inc., 1980, (no ISNB) p 1-5.
- ^ a b c d e Luke Krueger, A Noble Function: How U-Haul Moved America, Barricade Books Inc., 2007, ISBN 978-1-56980-329-5; p 9-14, 24, 50-51, 132-133, 177.
- ^ Private communication with the Lewis & Clark College Alumni Office, 29 Feb 2012.
- ^ N. Ravo, "Leonard S. Shoen, 83, Founder Of U-Haul, the Trailer Company," New York Times, 7 Oct 1999.
