What National Investigations Have Found:
Other Media:
Birthright:
Murder, Greed, and Power in the U-Haul Family Dynasty by Ronald
J. WatkinsWhere was U-Haul during all this?
See this at YouTube.
U-Haul News Stories
"Inside Edition" Coverage of U-Haul Tragedy
Inside Edition—Father and son trip: The plan was that Devin and his father, Mark Letzer, would take turns driving. Tragically, after a crash caused by trailer sway, Mark was thrown from the vehicle and killed instantly. Devin discovered his dad's body after he managed to crawl away from the wreckage.
Teen hurt when loose U-Haul trailer slams car; Firefighters extract victim from car in Prices Corner crash
A 17-year-old Wilmington boy was critically injured Thursday morning when a U-Haul trailer detached from a truck and collided with his car in Prices Corner. The crash happened at about 11:05 a.m. when a 2000 Hyundai Elantra, driven by Daniel Billinger, was heading west on Kirkwood Highway, state police Cpl. Jeff Whitmarsh said.
Los Angeles Times: DANGER IN TOW THREE-PART SERIES
Driving with rented
risks
June 24 2007
TUCSON — Marissa Sternberg sits in her wheelchair, barely able to move or speak. Caregivers are always at her side. Progress is measured in tiny steps: an unclenched fist, a look of recognition, a smile for her father. Nearly four years ago, Sternberg was a high-spirited 19-year-old bound for veterinary school in Denver. She rented a U-Haul trailer to move her belongings, hitched it to her Toyota Land Cruiser and hit the road with her two dogs and a friend. Driving with rented risks continued...
U-Haul attacked the Baker study as deeply flawed and insisted
that motorists actually had fewer accidents when pulling trailers.
Company battled U.S. safety rules
June 24, 2007
U-Haul is mostly self-regulating when it comes to towing safety — thanks largely to an aggressive campaign it led against proposed federal rules in the late 1960s and early '70s. The safety standards would have governed trailer hitches and couplings and would have set minimum requirements for informing customers of towing risks. Company battled continued...
Making his point, at 80 mph
June 24, 2007
U-Haul's CEO sets out to show his passengers that 'there's no magic' to towing a trailer and that driver error is what leads to accidents. The head of one of America's most famous companies was barreling down a suburban thoroughfare at 80 mph, with no hands on the wheel and a U-Haul trailer in tow. "There's no magic to this," Edward J. "Joe" Shoen, chairman of U-Haul International Inc., told stunned passengers in his Lincoln Town Car. "A trailer wants to trail." Making his point continued...
U-Haul says towing's "just safer "
June 25, 2007
U-HAUL SAYS IT’S SAFER to tow its equipment than to drive a car without a trailer. The company advanced this contrarian idea as far back as 1970, when it was fighting proposed federal towing-safety rules. Citing its own data and figures collected from states, U-Haul said in a report: “AN AUTOMOBILE WITHOUT A TRAILER IS MORE LIKELY TO HAVE AN ACCIDENT THAN ONE WITH A TRAILER.” ... Randy Whitfield, a Maryland-based statistician, quipped that if U-Haul’s data are accurate, “Isn’t the solution to our highway problem that everybody go out and rent a U-Haul trailer?” Towing's "just safer" continued...
Canadian TV
Risky move
October 22, 2005
They're big, orange and on the move. Orange is the colour of the familiar do-it-yourself moving company U-Haul. With some 1,500 dealers in Canada, it ranks as the country's largest moving vehicle rental company. But a W-FIVE investigation has found that, all too often, U-Haul trucks don't meet provincial safety standards. Risky move continued...
Family seeks inquest into son's U-Haul death
December 12, 2005
Gordon Annis might be alive today if the vehicle he was riding in had been properly maintained. At least that's the argument put forth by Annis's family members, who are calling for an inquest into his death. The 45-year-old man lost his life in late November near Peterborough while helping his cousin move. He was thrown from the U-Haul truck he was a passenger in, and then crushed as it rolled over him. Family seeks inquest continued...
Inside Edition
How safe are U-Haul trailers?
February 27, 2008
Devin Letzer and his father Mark were pulling a U-Haul trailer on a straight stretch of Texas highway in 2003 when Devin says the trailer began to swing back and forth violently; it’s called trailer sway. As the U-Haul trailer jackknifed, both the SUV and trailer flipped. Devin's father, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was thrown from the SUV and killed instantly. How safe are U-Haul trailers continued...
The Toronto Star
U-Haul lags behind in safety
August 30, 2007
U-Haul vehicles are still the most dangerous in the do-it-yourself moving industry—but in Ontario, at least, they're getting safer. The province has inspected 791 U-Haul trucks and trailers since September 2006. Ten per cent have failed. U-Haul's current failure rate is double its competitors' average of 5 per cent, said Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield. But the company's performance has improved markedly from the previous year, she said, when its vehicles failed 23 per cent of inspections. U-Haul lags behind continued...
Online Stories and Blogs
The Consumerist
U-Haul Knowingly Rents Deadly Trailers
U-Haul knowingly rents unsafe tow trailers that have the potential to kill customers. A yearlong investigation by the L.A. Times found that U-Haul's practices unnecessarily expose customers to the dangers of trailer sway. Consumerist.com
Public Safety.net
Injuries are not accidents! Injury prevention is accident prevention.
Brittany, age ten months. She was killed when she was two years old by a "negligent person" driving a U-Haul Rental Truck. The family of Brittany is asking for your help in spreading the word about the law that they are attempting to pass. PublicSafety.net
Ripoff Report
U-Haul unaccountable cowards don't care about customers
"They say they will have a truck ready for us at 4:00 pm. However, when they said they would have a truck ready for us, what they actually should have said was that they would have a warehouse on wheels ready for us. They gave us a standard transmission, 26 foot, diesel truck in lieu of the 17 foot truck we originally reserved. For some reason I wasn't totally convinced that I should be driving this vehicle with a class 5 license. I looked like an ant behind the wheel of a Tonka truck." RipOffReport.com
My Three Cents
it (transmission fluid) in, it was seeping out onto the concrete under the engine.
Beat this U-Haul horror story
An hour later at a stop light, the transmission decided to fail. 2.5 hours later, the mechanic showed up and added transmission fluid. It temporarily solved the problem so we decided to buy a few containers of transmission fluid and take off instead of waiting for another truck to arrive. two hours later, same thing. Transmission failed. This time, extra transmission fluid didn't help. My3Cents.com
Complaints.com
After paying the $1220.51, I went out and inspected the truck and transporter. The lights on the transporter did not work, so Dave cut a few wires and said I was good to go. When I got in the truck, I noticed that the radio did not work. He told me that I had the only diesel on the lot, take it or leave it. Complaints.com
Don't Use U-Haul
I came home from having a few farewell drinks with some workmates to a cryptic message on the machine. "This is X from UHaul. I just wanted to let you know that your truck didn't come in today. It should be in sometime tomorrow. Call me if you have any questions." Of course by now they were closed. DontUseUHaul.com
Please don't move before you read this!
I reserved a 10 ft. U-Haul, explaining the next size up, a 14 footer was just too big for our move. U-Haul CONFIRMED a 10 foot truck would be available. SURPRISE! The day before the move we were told we had to settle for the 14 ft. U-Haul from their So. Burlington VT. U-Haul location for the December move of our (23 year old) daughter. I was also traveling with our 11 year old son. (My wife & 19 year old son were waiting back in RI). The vehicle BLEW a spark plug within 40 minutes of the trip. AOLJournals
Huge Complaint with UHaul and Bank of America
The trailer we picked up had some problems and we were not able to exceed 30 MPH with the trailer empty or full. This was a big problem so we called roadside assistance to find out what the problem was. This kept us waiting for 2 hours in the middle of some Ghetto. The first time roadside assistance came it turned out that the lug nuts on the wheels weren't even tightened. The service man thought this would take care of the problem so he didn't check for any other problems and sent us on our way. We noticed the problem was not fixed so we called back the service man within 10 minutes. More from Jeffrey A. Solochek