AMERCO 2012 Annual Report
July 18, 2012 Download
July 13, 2012
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
We continued to post good accounting results through fiscal 2012. U-Haul® team members have been steadily increasing the quality of our customer service and it shows in our results. I am proud of our performance and along with 20,000 team members and 16,000 U-Haul Dealers, I am working to do better.
The macro environment remains blurred to me. Just how the Euro, the Dollar and the US Government will impact AMERCO, I am not able to foretell. We are not spending our time on these matters.
Time has been spent this year conforming more AMERCO operations to the principle of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is a sound business principle first used conceptually in Catholic social teaching. The principle holds that human affairs are best handled at the lowest possible level, closest to the affected persons. This applies directly to how we organize and manage our U-Haul Centers and Dealers. The result sought is to be more responsive to our customer and more decent with our individual team member. We have more progress to make here. We are working on this, while keeping an eye on the macro environment.
Existing self-move and self-store competitors remain strong. They appear to be well financed and staffed. We can expect them to fight us for the customers’ patronage.
The U-Haul rental truck fleet rotation plan continued through fiscal 2012 and the plan is to continue it through fiscal 2013 with modest net additions to our truck and trailer rental fleets.
Our self-storage program remains steady. We are adding owned and managed space as well as affiliate locations.
RepWest Insurance made a decision to strengthen reserves on some run-off business on its books. This resulted in a $48.3 million pretax charge to earnings. We believe these increased reserves better reflect RepWest’s position.
AMERCO entities continue to try to manage with a focus on long-term value. Our sustainability initiatives are working and may expand in the current year. College Boxes, eMove, Moving Help, U- Haul Car Share and U-Box businesses are investments in the future.
U-Haul is committing increased dollars and personnel to electronic marketing. Most of this work is done in-house. You should expect us to be competitive here.
Our Primary Service Objective is, “To provide a better and better product and service to more and more people at a lower and lower cost.” We remain committed to this objective.
My thanks to our customers, team members, U-Haul dealers, shareholders and lenders for their support.
Sincerely,
E.J. “Joe” Shoen