Posted on 05/22/2020 8:15:29 PM PDT by John W
Hertz, which started with a fleet of a dozen Ford Model T’s a century ago and became one of the world’s largest car rental companies, filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday after falling victim to its mountain of debt.
The coronavirus pandemic has devastated Hertz by grounding business travelers and tourists, making it impossible for the company to continue paying its lenders. A sharp drop in used car prices has also decreased the value of its fleet.
“They were doing quite well, but when you turn off the revenues and you own all these cars and all of a sudden the cars are worth less it’s a very tough business,” said John Healy, an analyst and managing director with Northcoast Research in Cleveland.
By the end of March, Hertz Global Holdings Inc. had racked up $18.7 billion in debt with only $1 billion of available cash.
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WOW!!!!
What scares me is if the masses are asses and blame this well planned, man made destruction of the US economy on Trump.
PLEASE GOD let 51 percent of Americans use their brains
Avis is really savoring this.
I guess this means there will be a glut of 1-3 year old used cars available in the near future for very reasonable prices.
there is a simple solution to this.
the stock should be zeroed, and the
Board of Directors executed.
Rates were too high for my taste at Hertz. They relied on the corporate market and then Enterprise/Avis ate their lunch.
I want the Hertz Penske Mustang throughback
well, they filed a chapter 11 bankruptcy
which means they will most likely propose a restructuring plan while continuing operations as best they can
chapter 7 is a liquidation bankruptcy, which would mean its pretty much over as a company
There will be other companies to follow. The biggest economic suicide in history.
Best car my family ever had (until my grandmother died and left us hers) was a 1969 Impala Dad bought from Hertz in 1972. The cross-country moves and daily trips that car made over the next 10 years would be a ... rather boring book :)
The individual(s) who came up with the idea of shutting this nation’s economy down...even for a day...should be hanged.
Will they continue to try harder when they are #1?
“...The individual(s) who came up with the idea of shutting this nation’s economy down...even for a day...should be hanged....”
Without a doubt. And they get no last cigarette, no last meal, no blindfold and the hanging is made public and televised. The communist RATs that colluded and are behind this mess should also follow suit.
That said, I hate to see them file; and, I hope they can recover.
My buddy had a ‘72 Impala convertible. Before it got ‘liquidated’ by some drunk while it was parked on a curve, it was a tank. We took out the OEM engine and dropped a 400 small block in it that already had a four barrel carb and headers. We got into some mischief in that thing. Even I miss that car.
saw a picture of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles...the parking lot was completely full of unused rental cars...put in storage. Thousands....smh.
There was a movie that came out back then — I can't remember which one, might have had Jack Lemmon in it — where the main character works for an ad agency, and he attends the filming sessions for the famous "Driver's Seat" ad (famous if your a baby boomer anyway). The movie shows them running take after take, and the husband and wife who are being dropped into the car via overhead wires keep missing the target, shins hitting the windshield, landing on the hood, crashing into the rear of the front seats, etc.
A competing car rental company should have made counter-OJ commercials that said, “At XYZ car rental you won’t have to run through the airport to secure your car rental, we’ll hold it for you”.
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