Writen by Lance Winslow
If you own a mobile car wash business, no doubt you have tapped into the washing of vehicles that office complexes. But have you considered washing fleets of vehicles? For instance have you consider washing for large Rent-A-Car corporations? If you haven't and you wish to expand your customer base and fleet clientele it would be wise to do so.
Now then, let's discuss a large corporation that handles Rent-A-Cars and study their history. It is important to study their history of large companies before you go in and make the sales call because you will want to have the power of information behind you. Let's take a look at doing business with Avis Rent-A-Car. You see, Avis Rent-A-Car has been around since 1946 started by Warren Avis.
Avis had been bought and sold and spun off a half a dozen times but always keeping the brand name out where travelers could remember it. It was sold in 1954 to a wealthy Bostonian who kept building it up and then he sold it to an investment banking firm in 1962 who made up the slogan 'We try harder', a technique still taught in business schools across the country.
In 1965 the investment firm sold it to ITT for 54 million and they in turn sold it in 1977 to Norton Simon, who was bought in 1983 by Esmark after Norton Simon signed a marketing agreement to buy and rent only GM cars. Esmark was glad to have Avis as part of its Norton Simon acquisition, but Esmark was then acquired by Beatrice and now Beatrice owned them. They were at this point still buying all GM cars.
GM was very pleased. Beatrice was then sold to the investment firm of Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts and Company and Beatrice sold its Avis division to Wesray Capital Corp. They had separated out Avis Europe, which was then its own entity and was traded on the London Stock Exchange. GM fearful of losing its juicy customer, which was worth now over 260 million in 1986 dollars, GM decided to buy up Avis stock and become a minority shareholder.
The Avis Company then was purchased by its employees in an ESOP for 750 million. HFS Inc. then purchased Avis to go with its holdings of resorts, hotels and other businesses. In May of 2001, Cendant Corp bought all of Avis for 937 million and still owns it this month. Cendant has over 50,000 employees nationwide. They still have some ownership from GM and still buy their cars. Most of Avis cars are Buick's, Pontiacs and Cadillac's. GM discontinued Oldsmobile and previously they had lots of those. Now most of these type cars are either sold or waiting to be sold. Avis is expanding into Used Car Sales lots. They have started a prototype in NJ:
http://www.avisnj.com/more_info.html if you would like to see their progress
If you own a mobile car washing company you may wish to contact them to see if you can do all their washing. Their used cars come with 30 day bumper to bumper and 12,000 Avis backed warranties. Also they offer 12 month leases on new or used cars. The new cars would be similar to the Enterprise Lease Deal and the used car lease is basically a 12 month rental or a rental car run out; a new twist on an old theme. If it works we expect other car rental agencies to try that too.
Avis has 931 agency outlets, 213 at airports and 445 at off airport lots in the USA. Worldwide about 3,120; their fleet hovers around 200,000 cars plus or minus. Their HQ is now in Parsippany NJ. Their CEO was once with Budget Group and Continental Airlines. Their President was also from another competitor. Avis has 275 licensees, which should be our primary targets for service. Many do their own cars, but others can never seem to get them all done. Many other locations need a mobile car washing service urgently due to lack of all the labor to wash the cars and the volume of course that they rent. To find an Avis nearest you go the this web site:
http://www.avis.com/AvisWeb/profile/AvisHome
Then type in zip codes. Hint - leave off the last two digits of the zip code to find all the rental offices in your area. The reason I recommend Rent-A-Car companies to expand your clientele of your mobile car wash business is because for some three decades our company was in the business of mobile car washing before my retirement and we always felt it easy to sign up Rent-A-Cars to increase our company's monthly income. I hope you will consider this in expanding your company in 2006.
Lance Winslow
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