Avis Rent A Car System
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Avis Rent A Car System Inc. is an automobile rental company headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey USA. Avis and Budget Rent a Car are units of Cendant Car Rental Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cendant. With the breakup of Cendant in late 2006, Avis and Budget have become part of Avis Budget Group.
Avis currently operates over 4000 branch offices world-wide, including locations in Australia and New Zealand, the Central American and Caribbean regions, South America and Africa, and is one of the largest vehicle rental agencies in the world.
Apart from renting out cars for out-of-town travellers (as well as local commuters who are temporarily without the use of their own vehicles), the company also provides an assortment of vehicles ranging from cube and panel vans to 5-ton box trucks, for the purposes of both residential and commercial moving. Avis also operates a number of storage facilities at their various locations.
[edit] History
The company was founded in 1946 in Detroit by Warren E. Avis *1915. It established branch operations across the U.S. over the next few years, and by its tenth anniversary in 1956 had opened its first international offices in Europe, Canada and Mexico.
Their corporate motto is "We Try Harder." It was adopted in 1962[1] to play off Avis' status as the second largest car rental company in the U.S., at the expense of its larger competitor The Hertz Corporation.
Avis has been owned by a number of other companies over the years, along with several periods of being a public company. These include:
- 1962 - Investment group Lazard Freres
- 1965 - ITT Corporation
- 1977 - Norton Simon
- 1983 - Esmark
- 1984 - Beatrice
- 1986 - Investment firm Wesray Capital
- 1996 - HFS Corporation
- 2001 - Cendant
Cendant is spinning off the company into a new entity to be called Avis Budget.
[edit] External links
| Major car rental companies | |
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Dollar-Thrifty: Dollar - Thrifty Independents: Auto Europe - Hertz - Europcar - Enterprise - Kemwel - Rent-A-Wreck - Sixt |
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