I'll start it off with my own personal horror story.  When I was first married, my then-wife and I were moving out of a place we had rented and needed to put our things in storage.  Being the churchmouse-poor grad student and wife that we were, we rented a U-Haul truck.  The POS had no first gear, and the loading ramp was falling apart to the point that my wife had crawl under the truck to push up a bar of metal that was preventing the ramp from sliding back into its place under the truck bed.  Due to the gear problem, I ended up taking out a plate-glass window in a neighboring building (couldn't get it out of reverse).  Luckily, I had purchased liability insurance from U-Haul when I rented the truck.

Ever since, I have rented from Ryder or some other place.  Never again will U-Haul see any of my business, even if it is only to purchase packing boxes.

Tomorrow I will be sober, but you will still be ugly.

I had an absolutely awful experience with U-Haul.  We rented a truck from them to move from central PA to northern DE.  When we went to pick up the truck, the place (a U-Haul owned & operated service center) wasn't open because the manager was "running late", so we had to cool our heels for fifteen minutes until he showed up (normally not a big deal, but we were on a very tight schedule).  We were supposed to have a medium size truck (in fact, we had "reserved" such a truck - if you ever "reserve" a U-Haul, expect that it won't be there), but all they had for a one way move was one small, beat up old jalopy that had over 200,000 miles on it.  We were skeptical but at that point didn't have much choice, so we took it.  It performed reasonably well (and fortunately it was still large enough to fit all our things in, although just barely) until about ten miles from our destination, when it quit running while we were sitting at a stoplight.  Fortunately a police officer was right behind me and helped me push the truck out of traffic.  It turns out the alternator quit working.  So we called U-Haul and they sent a tow truck to come and tow us to our destination.  The tow driver was great (not employed by U-Haul!), but it still took him a while to get there, so we only ended up about three hours later than we expected.  Fortunately my wife was able to drive ahead and sign our apartment lease, or we'd have had to spend the night in a hotel.  In any case, the real fun began after we were unpacked and moved in.  It took three weeks and numerous calls before we could get anyone to come and pick up the truck from our apartment building's parking lot.  Fortunately, it was a big parking lot, so it wasn't a huge issue, but if we had been in a more urban / city area the municipality probably would have towed it away before U-Haul did.  I never got our $50 security deposit back either (when I called, they claimed they had no record of the condition the truck was returned in, and said they'd "have to check into it" - I'm shocked they didn't bill me for the repairs).  Avoid U-Haul at all costs - Penske, Budget, or even Enterprise (they rent cargo vans for local moves) might cost a bit more, but you will be FAR better off in the long run.

Has anybody else noticed the effect the LA Times expose has had on U-Haul? Type in UHAL into the Nasdaq stock market ticker thing. You'll notice it's dropped from ~$80 to a tad above $75 in 5 days. Awesome.

This happened to a friend of mine- I have my own u-haul horror story but this one is funnier.

So my friend moves to Colorado to try to open his own business.  It fails and he has to return to Houston with no cash and his tail between his legs.  He has to rent from U-haul.  He reserves a large truck and when he gets their he sees that is about ten years too old and just a real hunk of crap.  He still needs it and rents it.

Paperwork is done and the register guy says "let me show you how to start it".  Which is strange to him but whatever.  They walk out to the truck and the guy pops open the hood.  "See you're gonna need to spray this here either into the engine to get it to start".  My friend looks at the can then at the intake.  All over the engine are stickers forbidding the use of either as a starting method.  "DO NOT USE EITHER TO START THIS ENGINE". My friend asks "What about all the stickers?".  

The U-haul guy sighs and slowly looks from under his cap- he mutters:

"Corporate don't know shit"

This is now my friend's favorite thing to say.

I really hate 'confidential settlements.'  I think they should be eliminated.  Sure, tell the plaintiff that he or she cannot go to the press & rant.  But do not hide these cases.  UHaul basically can pay off injured people, or their families, and never maintain records of how often such accidents happen.  This means that every single time when a new case is filed, UHaul can claim that this happens "extremely rarely" and that it was all the driver's fault.  If they had records of the thousands of accidents and bad maintenance situations, this claim would become more difficult.

These cases are also the ones that make me hate Kennedy's opinion on punitive damages (that punitive damages have to be proportionate to the actual damages suffered).  The only way to make UHaul change its policies is to slap them with a punitive damage award that actually makes them sit up and take notice.  They save millions of dollars each year by doing crap maintenance an renting unsafe trailers and trucks.  The damage award should take this into consideration.  Otherwise, UHaul will continue to make the simple calculation that failing to maintain their truck saves them money, a lot of money.

Thalia

It was the summer of 2004. My friend Skull, after a long East Coast exile and a period of unemployment, had landed a new job and needed to get his truck and his dog to California. Now, I'm not what you'd call a country boy, but when a vacation sounds like a Willie Nelson song, it's hard to say no.

In Baltimore, Skull rented a trailer from a local Uhaul, had it attached to his van and brought it home. From the beginning it looked wrong. There was a good 20-degree sag where the trailer tongue met the hitch, but we'd been assured that it was supposed to look like that. "Well", we thought, "they're the professionals. They know what they're doing." In retrospect, we should have been more skeptical about the staff's level of commitment to excellence. While loading the trailer, I picked up a box, stepped into the back, and the trailer instantly rocked backwards and lifted off the hitch. Skull and I unloaded and returned to Uhaul. The trailer was examined by their crack(head) triage team and it was determined that we'd been given the wrong trailer for our hitch. The staff expert, who bore a striking resemblance to actor Eddie Steeples,was dispatched to fix the problem.

At this point, my commitment to not judging by appearances was somewhat strained. I was struck by the general shittiness of the facility. The place was dirty, not in a "we never clean" kind of way, more of a "we clean the place regularly in the most half-assed way we can get away with" way. the staff were poorly-spoken, surly, and generally less than committed to customer service. I also noted that there wasn't a person over 25 in the place. I was trying not to judge, but I wasn't all that confident about their skills. Still, we got a new trailer and headed off. The new trailer still sagged, but it remained attached while we loaded, so in the morning we headed off in the the arms of America.

After about an hour we stopped for gas and munchies and had another look at the hitch. It was making a disturbing amount of noise, so we decided to have it checked out. We found a nearby Uhaul, called ahead, and brought it in for a look-see. At Uhaul #2 we were told that we had the right trailer, but that the hitch had been installed wrong. Really wrong. There were supposed to be four bolts holding the hitch on, but only two of them had been attached and one of those had been done wrong. We were told that we had one bolt holding the trailer hitch on to the van and that at any time it could have broken loose. At 70 mph. In traffic.

The second shop connected the hitch correctly in about an hour. They were friendly, courteous, professional, and didn't charge us a dime. They asked who'd done the work so they could tell corporate. Skull pulled the paperwork and said it was Baltimore Uhaul #315149 on Emerson between Lake and Palmer (I paraphrase), and got a collective groan. As it happens, we'd rented from the worst Uhaul on the Eastern Seaboard and our guys had to repair their botched work about once a month. Once complete, the hitch was perfectly straight (no sag), rock-solid, and much quieter. We tipped the crew $20 and headed off again.

Over the years I've rented from Uhaul several times and while the trucks have been generally old and in need of repair, I didn't have a huge problem until this past incident. We were an accident waiting to happen. The trailer could have fishtailed around us at speed, it could have detached and flown off behind us, it could have detached and come forward while braking, impacting the back of the van at speed. Considering the traffic we hit in Indianapolis and LA, the rainstorm in St. Louis, and the high winds all through the plains, I could point to twenty places where the trailer could have taken out two other cars en route to the ditch. And why? Because the brain trust at Uhaul just didn't give a shit.

Now that I know this wasn't just one bad shop, but rather Uhaul's standard way of doing business, I'll never rent from Uhaul again.

-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things.

Part of the problem with nationwide rental companies is that there's a big incentive for local franchises to rent out the worst trucks to the people who have to move the farthest.  If you keep your junker truck in Los Angeles and only rent to people moving within LA county, it's going to be bleeding you on maintenance, and word is going to get around that you're renting out shitty trucks.  Better to hold on to that heap until someone needs to move to Chicago, and let the store in Chicago handle the problem.  And if the truck breaks down on the trip, it's not like the person you rented it to is going to hang around and cause trouble for you.  They'll be stuck ranting in Chicago.

I guess the solution to this would be to implement some charge-through system via the Head Office, where the receiving office has the right to demand compensation from the renting office for any work they have to do to get a received truck up to spec.  Hopefully, this would be an incentive for the renting shop to keep their trucks in passable condition, and only rent equipment they are confident in for long trips.

(is 3fingerspointback)

I rented from U-Haul about 15 years ago to move my mother up from Virginia.  Same story as port, show up at the franchise (with the harried operator showing up late) and the size truck I had reserved wasn't there.  The guy was extremely pissed at me for being pissed at not getting the truck I needed.  Then he presented me with a contract for a higher daily rate and additional mileage beyond what I was told (not to mention all sorts of insurance and extra equipment charges for stuff I didn't need) I told him to forget about it.  That's when he tells me I owed him $75 for a non-refundable reservation fee.  What the fuck was that?  That was the $75 he was going to charge me for making a reservation for a vehicle he failed to reserve for me.  Now, that's what I call a business plan.  I told him to shove it, went home, called my mother and told her we might be a day or two in moving her.  Rented from Ryder with no problems whatsoever the next week.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

U-hall has brake problems!  I read through that whole la-times story a few days ago - and was disappointed to see that it didn't have any comments about trucks from u-hall.

I once got a truck that had no breaks.  It was a manually shift so I managed to gear it down, then pump the breaks about 8 times to bring it to a stop... but holy-crap. The truck and no working breaks.  

The worst part of u-hall is that they get you in a really bad situation - you have to be out on that day.  They usually have no other truck that you can swap with... so you drive the broken truck, with no brakes like I did, or you don't move on time.

Rent from budget instead - they give you a brand new truck for only a little more than a u-hall death trap..

Moving from Missouri to Colorado.  Moving two apartments - mine and my girlfriends.  Both have to be out of the apartments that day.  Just graduated college so families were in town to help move on the day and (thank god) drive out to Colorado with us to share the pain.

So my girlfriends father and I show up at the U-Haul place and (I guess to no-ones surprise on this thread) no truck!  What do you mean no truck?  This was before the whole Seinfeld joke about 'being able to take the reservation but not keep the reservation' schtick, but so true.  No truck, they repeat.

We try to explain our situation but the guy says theres nothing he can do.  But he calls around to every U-haul within a 200 mile radius and he finds a piece of crap truck 150 miles away in the middle of nowhere Missouri and basically says 'take it or leave it'.  So while our families are waiting for us to get back to start moving, we have to drive for six hours round trip on dirt and crap sealed roads to a place lost by time and a truck to match.  I swear it looked like it was from the early 50's and drove like that to.  I was pleasantly surprised it didnt have a steering wheel gear shift.  But that was the only pleasantry.  The pull out ramp didnt work - makes it nice to load the truck.  And it could not safely go over about 55.

Thankfully, though, it didnt break down on the long trip and we got there safe and sound in the end.  But the ride was terrible.  Since it couldnt go over 55 (and that was pushing it) we were the bane of every highway goer's existence.  The number of evil stares I got for going so slow and snarling traffic was amazing.