Putting You in Your Rightful Place

The Hertz Corporation is the world's largest car rental company, handling more than 30 million rentals worldwide with approximately 6,500 locations in more than 140 countries and a fleet of 550,000 vehicles, including 300,000 vehicles in the United States alone. 

In 1918, Walter Jacobs, the twenty-two-year-old pioneer of auto renting, began his Ford rental business with only twelve Model-Ts in Chicago. He sold the company to John D. Hertz in 1923 but remained a prominent figure in the company until his retirement more than fifty years later. In 1925, Hertz pioneered a coast-to-coast car rental network. Together, Jacobs and Hertz swiftly turned the small company into a well-known brand, Hertz Car Rental. By 1932, Chicago's Midway Hertz became the first car rental company to open an airport rental service at Chicago Midway Airport. Hertz was generating annual revenues of about $1 million. General Motors would later buy out Hertz's Yellow Cab Manufacturing Company, renaming the car rental portion of the business the Hertz Drive-Ur-Self System.

Hertz's iconic advertising slogan through the Sixties was developed by the Norman, Craig & Kummel agency in 1959. The television ads were famous for their gravity-defying visuals of a driver being placed magically in the driver's seat (always a convertible) from mid-air. The added jingle, "Let Hertz put you in the driver’s seat," was sung by the expansive vocal range of the a cappella quartet, The Hi-Lo's. It ranks among the "Top 100 Advertising Campaigns of the Century" by Advertising Age magazine. Other ads featured performance cars you could rent, including the brand-new Corvette Sting Ray (left).

Note: Through its subsidiary Hertz Equipment Rental Corporation, the company also rents construction and industrial equipment to contractors and industrial and government markets. Hertz's Claim Management Corporation subsidiary is a leading third-party administrator, while Hertz Technologies, Inc. provides telecommunications services to corporations. Hertz Local Edition specializes in providing vehicles to the insurance community and auto dealers.