Conversations From the Corner Office

Interview transcript

Enterprise Rent-A-Car Chairman and CEO Andrew Taylor talks with Kai Ryssdal

Kai Ryssdal: Andy Taylor, welcome to the program.

Andrew Taylor: Hey, great to be here with you.

Ryssdal: So we flew in this morning from Los Angeles, stopped at the Enterprise rent-a-counter, had a very nice encounter with the young woman there, and she said, "So what are you doing in town?" And I said, "Well, maybe I'll drop a name here," and I said, "We're going to talk to guy named Andrew Taylor." She said, "Oh, oh, sure, well, tell him you got great service here." And I said, "Absolutely, I will, of course."

My question, though, is do you think that sort of thing happens at the Hertz and Avis counter where if you mention the CEO's name, somebody – somebody who's waiting on you is going to know it?

Taylor: You know, I don't know. All I know is about the Enterprise family: my immediate family, and our extended family, which are the now 74 – 75,000 employees. And I think that, you know, the fact we've had two CEOs in 50 years — same ownership, a consistent senior management team — that that really helps create this sort of family environment. And if you give me her name, I would love to send her an e-mail because that's the kind of stuff I do every day. Just say, "Thank you for providing great service to these people from L.A."

Ryssdal: Did you ever have a chance to do anything else with your life that wasn't going to wind you up in this job?

Taylor: Well, after I graduated from the University of Denver Business School, I then went to work for Ford for a while. I really thought – because, frankly, the business was pretty small and I think I was comfortable being away from St. Louis and the family for a while. I wanted to just kind of try my wings. I'd been working since I was 16 summers and Christmas vacations. And, you know, really loved what my father did, respected it, felt like I contributed in the early stages by having to take care of my clothes and my mother's food budget being cut, which was a serious problem.

And I really loved what I did at Ford for three years. But I really think that my father's business at the time, as I found, really probably was a notch above that in terms of how they did business. Not necessarily was, you know, more profitable, but I just think the way that they did business: doing things as a team, focusing on customer satisfaction. That's – my father always wanted his customers to be – just walk away saying, "That's the best place I've ever done business, and those are terrific people."

Ryssdal: There's a line that you run across when you read up on you and this company, and it talks about you and your family being the owner-operators of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which is kind of an interesting thought, given how absolutely enormous this company is.

Taylor: Well, it is large. However, I still don't think of it that way. I still think of it as a family business that maybe got on a little steroids here or something. But I think it's a privilege to be the temporary steward or CEO, if you will, of this company. And I think today focusing on customers and the employees and the long-term owner-operator and not as necessarily a value creator for the short-term is a competitive advantage. Plus, it's a lot more fun.

Ryssdal: You're talking about not worrying about short-term gains in reference to this being a privately-held corporation.

Taylor: Yes, I – we look – when we make decisions around here, we want to make them for the long-term. We now are fortunate to have two third-generation Taylors in the business. And so it's nice to think long-term, but it's also, I think, a competitive advantage because if something isn't going to pay off say for two years, then maybe our competitors won't do it. We'll say, "Look, let's invest the capital, the gold we've built up over the years, and if it works out in three or four years, that's fine.

Ryssdal: Surely, though, there are some downsides to not having access to public markets and to Wall Street's capital.

Taylor: Clearly, you are right and I've earned some of this gray hair and no hair because there were years and times when we were growing really fast. Capital was expensive, and we were tempted – and, frankly, I've always said we have to have choices to raise capital because we never want to have one of our operations call us in St. Louis and say, "You know, we need more money for more cars to serve our customers," and we would say, "No."

So we had to think about being public. We had to think about maybe selling a piece of the business. And so those kinds of thoughts, you know, went through our minds. And, frankly, we had some conversations from time to time and I might tell you, we told everybody in the company we were doing that.

Ryssdal: And what was the reaction?

Taylor: Gratifying… that, "You know what? We trust Jack, and we're getting to know you, Andy."

Ryssdal: Jack, your father?

Taylor: Jack, my father, I'm sorry. And very gratifying, you know, that there was a feeling, "You'll do the right thing."

Ryssdal: Enterprise is, though, very much an anomaly in this industry. When you think about some of the competitors, they have gone from arms of auto companies to arms of private equity groups to partially publicly-owned companies. I mean you guys really aren't normal, if you will. How is it that you've gotten so big?

Taylor: Well, I sometimes think about ourselves as being boring. This is kind of a boring story, because we haven't changed much. We haven't been flipping around or being flipped. We have just stayed the course. We didn't focus on airports in the beginning. And, you know, I think we just quietly snuck up on everybody, and, again, it was – just because of the history of the other companies, they turned into, you know, having value as being the driver, not long-term growth and opportunity for employees and great service for customers.

Ryssdal: The other way that Enterprise stands out in the car market, or at least it has until your recent acquisition of Vanguard went through, was that you are the off-airport car renter. How did that start? Why aren't you guys – why haven't you been on airports?

Taylor: Well, we are. In the last five, eight years, we have gained – grown to a market share of about 8 percent, just under the Enterprise brand. We've been the only brand to grow at airports since 9/11; so we are – we were starting to be a force at the airports in addition to, you know, fostering and continuing to grow in the home-city market, primarily serving insurance companies, people that had their car's damage repaired, needing a special kind of vehicle for the weekend, some corporate business — that type of stuff.

Ryssdal: Tell me the story of your dad and how he started this company.

Taylor: Great story, and I'm very proud of him. You know, he's my mentor and somebody I think has, you know, been so terrific to my family and myself. But he was in college. He was not a good student, not an unfamiliar quality of many of us in the family. He was quoted in Fortune Magazine, I believe, as saying, "Well, fortunately, World War II came along to relieve me of any further academic requirements."

Got into the Navy. Very frankly, the Navy had a profound effect on him, and many of the traits that he learned in the Navy: flying off the USS Enterprise — thus the name - shooting down aircraft, being shot at himself, losing friends. But it was all about in the Navy for him maturing, doing things as a team, having fun. It's about the mission; it's about values. And he, I think, took a lot of those qualities with him, went to work for his friend's Cadillac empire here in St. Louis, the Lindberg family. And, after the war, there were more customers than cars and service levels weren't that terrific.

So he went to his boss in 1956 and said, "I'd like to get in the automobile leasing business. I think we could really differentiate ourselves on service." Borrowed the money to put in the pot with the Lindberg family. And that's when the – when he came to all of us in the family when I was ten and said, "Take care of your clothes. Can't afford to replace them as fast, and your mom's going to have a lower, you know, less of a food budget."

Crisis, but long story short, you know, we all felt committed to that business, and I remember him coming home saying, "I have seven cars on the street," and it seems like yesterday. And he was so intense about the business, but he had fun. He had people that worked for him that were really fun. That they had – they celebrated together. And his customers loved him. And he provided full maintenance leasing, if you will, and other services — kind of a carriage-trade leasing company that eventually evolved into corporate clients.

And the rent-a-car business came about simply because he was listening to his customers. His customers, you know, came to him and said, "Well, I have my car in the shop," and he found loaner vehicles for them; talked to an insurance agent down the street. Claimants and insureds needed vehicles. Voila.

Ryssdal: What are the differences, from a business strategy point of view, between the home city market, which is the model that you guys started in, that is, the replacements and the insurance companies, versus the airport model? I mean what do you think about as you make those decisions?

Taylor: Well, I think we are all about customer satisfaction, and employees having a terrific experience, and then having, you know, a gross story — because then our employees are happy and feel like they're challenged — and the bottom line last. Those are the four things we measure ourselves on.

And I think when – as we move to the airports, some people could say it's much more of a commodity business being driven by corporate contracts or the Internet or, you know, an 800 number, whatever. And I think we have tried and succeeded. J.D. Power has given us six out of the last seven years, I believe, the top award for satisfaction of airport renters; so we try to personalize it a bit and try to have those qualities of customer satisfaction and attractive employees that people like doing business with.

And with our new acquisition of Alamo/National, they do some things very, very well. Like car choice, so you can kind of pick your own car in, you know, a certain part of the lot, not just be given a set of keys. We want to keep those really good things they're doing and maybe enhance them a bit so that our customers feel like they're really having a terrific experience at the airports.

Ryssdal: Those customers, and I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I would guess that they break down, really, into two groups. You've got the business travelers who don't really care what it costs. They just want to get into a car and get to their meetings. And then you've got the families and the people who are paying for themselves. And that, I imagine, would be a really price-sensitive part of your market. How do you compete when everybody's looking for the lowest buck on the rent-a-car?

Taylor: Well, first of all, I think we're going to compete very well for value-minded customers because we have, by far, the strongest balance sheet in the industry. Our interest costs, for example, are hundreds of millions of dollars lower than some of our competitors. We are the value leader.

Alamo is clearly that. And, again, we just want to build on that brand and serve those customers. And Enterprise doesn't overlap a lot with Alamo, but it's – those are a lot of value-minded customers also who are coming to Enterprise, and they love our personalized service at airports.

And then you have the business traveler, as you say, who is the road warrior, as people will call it. They just want to get off the airplane and go right to their car. Well, it is about speed and it's about recognition, though, more importantly. They want to be recognized as being special, a frequent renter, and they want to have something special occur. And we're going to — right now, National gives them the choice of vehicles — we're going to be adding to that aspect. We're going to have satisfactory to terrific speed, and we're also going to have great recognition of them as a very valuable customer that rents frequently.

Ryssdal: Here's a really basic question. How do you know they want recognition? How do you know they just don't want to get into that car, find the documents, drive to the checkout, and zip, be gone?

Taylor: We listen to them. We ask them a lot, and we want to get inside their heads, and we want to meet their needs. And I'll tell you what: being a private business, we can spend more time focusing on our customers than focusing on value creation.

Ryssdal: Do you think your customers know that you're a privately-held business? And do you think it matters that they know?

Taylor: I don't think it really matters. I think, if they happen to associate the Taylor name with the company, I think that's great because I think the family has been here for a long time. And I think we have tried to have a reputation and a focus on the business that people would admire. But, really, we just want them to have – we want to empower our people in the field to treat our customers really, really well, so that they will come back. And our people feel empowered.

Here at the corporate office, we're not here to be served. We are here to serve all of our branch offices – our almost 7500 branch offices. We are the people providing the service to our employees, who can then provide the great customer satisfaction to our customers.

Ryssdal: You hire mostly college graduates to work in your branch offices, as I understand it.

Taylor: Most of the new employees that come to us are, yes, they're either a recent college graduate or maybe coming off another career. But we also have people that sometimes are – you know, have had a long career. A teacher, a friend of mine who I knew, was a teacher retired and then started another career with us. He's doing great, but most, yes, are coming into a developmental job early in their careers.

Ryssdal: Please take this question in the spirit with which it's intended. But my guess would be that most people don't go to college to build a career in the car rental business.

Taylor: Absolutely. They – that is their perception and, maybe more importantly, that sometimes can be their parents' perception.

Ryssdal: Yeah, good point.

Taylor: And I will tell you, in the early days when we were not terribly well-known and our business model wasn't fully developed, it was really difficult to attract enough energetic, entrepreneurial, high-energy people to come and join us. It is easier now in that respect, because we are thought of as, I think Business Week magazine ranked us fifth in the country as best place to start a career. So we do have a reputation for being – having a great entry-level or developmental job, a place to start a career. We just now have to hire so many people that that's a little complicating to the challenge, but our reputation in that area is quite good.

Ryssdal: Is size in some regards a handicap a little bit?

Taylor: Size.

Ryssdal: You're the biggest car rental company in North America.

Taylor: Size can be a challenge and does worry me in this regard. I think the reason why we have succeeded is that we have always operated as a small, family-owned company at every branch. That our employees understood what we're about. When a new employee comes to work for us, we don't teach them how to rent a car. We teach them for – teach them what our customers expect, what we stand for as a business, and then we teach them how to rent cars. And we think that's really appealing. And, in a larger company, one can say that can be harder to spread that when you're now in five countries. You now have 7500 offices, 75,000 employees. That's hard. We have to spend a lot of time then on doing that. And I can say, personally, I talk to a couple 20,000 employees a year, generally in larger settings, just like this that, you know, what we're all about, what our balance sheet is — those four items — and how important their work is.

Ryssdal: You have now the Enterprise brand. You've got, with this recent acquisition, Alamo and National. How important do you think brand names are to rental car customers?

Taylor: Well, I think it varies. Now that the industry is consolidating, the brands that are the larger companies' brands now, I think, are quite important. You know, brands have to be nurtured. They can be modified and that's the kind of work we're going – we're doing right now to see what we're going to do with these three brands.

We have committed for about 18 months to running two companies with three brands. And our goal is, and I've told employees, both the Alamo/National employees and Enterprise people, our intention is to grow all three brands.

Ryssdal: But if you go out to the airport, as we came in this morning, you know, you can go to Enterprise and get a car for however many dollars it is. Then you go next door to Alamo, and it's $20 more than that; and then you go next door to National, and it's $20 more than that. Are you, in a sense, at least for the next 18 months, competing against yourself?

Taylor: It's amazing. The three companies – the customers that they serve are – don't overlap much at all. Now, yes, if you're at the airport, got off a plane and didn't have a reservation, you could walk down there. In a sense, we are competing with each other. Yeah, that's kind of true, but I think that in the bigger scope, we're going to develop these brands and they're going to be targeted to different customers.

In fact, we're going to cover now — with particularly the National brand, which has the technology and the speed — the frequent renter stuff that major corporate customers need and we're going to make those brands very complimentary. But, yes, on the one off kind of issues like you just mentioned, sure, there's going to be competing.

Ryssdal: But I get the sense you're not too worried about that.

Taylor: No, in fact, I think the better story is that I was with a bunch of our rental managers the other day and I was speaking to one of them who is at a Florida airport: Enterprise brand, Florida airport, right next door to the National brand. Customer came up to Enterprise, said, "I really need a Suburban. I got a bunch of people and bunch of golf clubs," and we didn't. Walked right to the National counter, said, "Do you have a Suburban, and can you help this customer? He's a mutual customer of ours."

Ryssdal: All right, so let me ask you one more thing about the airport. You ready? So we're waiting out there this morning. It's 95 degrees and 90 percent humidity.

Taylor: Really, it's cool.

Ryssdal: Yeah, that's right.

Taylor: Should be over 100 now.

Ryssdal: But here's the thing. So we were waiting at the Enterprise sign, and the National/Alamo van drove right past us.

Taylor: You know, we made this acquisition — we made this acquisition 15 days ago.

Ryssdal: I'm just pulling–

Taylor: Oh, no, no. I take our business very seriously, and that is a great point. Thank you.

Ryssdal: I'm just thinking, you know.

Taylor: And give me some more of those little pearls, okay?

Ryssdal: That's right, that's right. Keeping it on airports for a minute. You have been, as you said, getting into the airport market more now with the Enterprise brand in the last five, six years. You're going to do so even more intensively now with the National and Alamo. Still, though, you're going up against Hertz and Avis, which have a huge part of that very important market. How are you going to do?

Taylor: Well, we have great respect for Hertz and Avis; and, you know, they're going to give us a run for the money. This is good for consumers because they have choices. But we'd love to compete. And I think that, with a combination of our great service model, our great culture, our balance sheet, we're going to have the kind of assets that I think we're going to do very well in a competition.

Ryssdal: You have to explain to me how the biggest rental car company in North America getting bigger is good for consumers. What's it going to do for them on prices? You going to be cheaper now for us?

Taylor: I would – with our balance sheet and with us being the value leader, that will continue to occur. We are not going to be a company that is going to – at one point – be flipped, be levered up, have higher costs, and have to raise rates. We are all about growing the business. Our emphasis is on growing the business, serving our customers really well, and giving our employees opportunity. That's what's driving us.

Ryssdal: This acquisition that you completed earlier this month, buying Alamo and National under the corporate name of Vanguard. Was a company owned by Cerberus, the private equity group, which coincidentally, is also the private equity group that just bought Chrysler. Which prompts me to ask whether or not you're worried about the state of the American automobile industry today.

Taylor: Putting Cerberus' purchase of Chrysler aside, which is going to be a very interesting business case in business schools in the future.

Ryssdal: You betcha.

Taylor: It's going to be very interesting. I had been worrying about the American car manufacturing business for years. And, again, one of the few benefits of being older like I am is that you see things develop over time and you see cycles, etc. And the legacy burdens, you know, pension, medical on the Big Three; the emergence of Toyota; Honda, in their own special way; Nissan; the luxury car manufacturers in Europe. Volkswagen just announced they're going to– they're looking at building a plant here in the U.S. because the Euro is so strong to the dollar. It's going to require a lot of courage on behalf – on the part of those running – the Detroit Three and those that are running the unions and those that are running car parts manufacturing companies. It's going to be an interesting story to watch. And, frankly, we have to buy a lot of cars, and that is – that's a business risk for us right now.

Ryssdal: Which, it seems to me, puts you in a position to pick up the phone and call Rick Wagoner at GM or Alan Mulally at Ford and say, "Hey, fellas, what are you doing?"

Taylor: We want those guys to do really, really well. We want those businesses to succeed. Those businesses are not only important to us, but they're important to the country, to the public that works in those industries. So when I talk to Alan or I talk to the CEO at GM, Rick Wagoner, who I consider a friend, I am cheering them on. I'm saying, "Come on, man, keep going. Have fun. You know, do well."

And, again, the manufacturers of so-called "foreign," if you look at where they're sourcing parts, where they're assembling the cars now, you know, are they really foreign manufacturers anymore? It's kind of like scrambled eggs out there right now.

Ryssdal: Do you care, actually, where you buy your cars so long as you're getting a good value for a good price?

Taylor: I care about where we buy our cars based on what our customers want and what satisfies our customers. That's the first criteria. And part of that satisfaction, of course, is a value proposition. So we have to be very thoughtful we're not paying too much for vehicles, we're buying cars that perform well, and we're buying cars that also perform well in the used car market when we take the vehicle out of our fleet. Those are the kinds of things that we think about.

Ryssdal: How long is the average rental car in your fleet?

Taylor: A little over 11 months.

Ryssdal: And then what do you do with it?

Taylor: We very carefully – we have a team of what we call remarketing people in the hundreds that basically sell cars, and they go through a variety of channels. Then you go back to new car dealers or the virtual used car lot for many used car dealers — because we know what is coming out in the next week and a dealer doesn't have to own it, but he can start selling it. We use auto auctions. We do some direct selling to consumers ourselves. It's not very big, but we do some of that activity and that's primarily the way we do that, and it's a very interesting activity. And it's very important to us that we get a very reasonable value out of those vehicles at the back end, because then we really know what our costs are going forward.

Ryssdal: Enterprise is one of, if not the biggest purchaser of automobiles on the whole planet. With that comes a certain obligation to sustainability and global warming. How do you see that obligation?

Taylor: Well, first of all, the debate about global warming is over as far as my family and our business is concerned. And, yes, we have a lot of cars. We're going to need a lot of cars. We're going to need fuel, but we also, at the same time, have to be very cognizant of what the public thinks of an entity like us. So we have over the last year, in particular, and maybe even before that, been thinking very hard.

My father has an interest in the environment, frankly. He's been very supportive with a large gift five, six years ago at the Missouri Botanical Garden, one of the best in the world on plant studies and plant categorizations and discoveries. But we are doing things right now that for – let me just give you a couple of examples.

We have over 40,000 flex fuel vehicles that can utilize E85, which is the ethanol, 85 percent ethanol. There's not a lot of refueling stations yet, but we're putting those vehicles at our offices that are near where E85 can – is vended. Then, in essence, we're introducing the public to E85. We've got over 3,000 hybrids. Many – we tweaked our fleet, so roughly a third of them get over 32 miles to the gallon. Nearly 40 percent of our fleet gets over 28 miles per gallon and long story short: we want to be doing those things. We can't reinvent car manufacturing and the fueling systems, but when those technologies present themselves, we're going to be there using and buying them and introducing that to our customers.

Ryssdal: The conversation, though, from Detroit's end of that goes, "We're only giving our customers what they want. So for us to lower our fuel economy standards is a tricky thing, because that'll hurt sales." Isn't there an obligation on Enterprise's part as such a huge buyer of cars to force that hand a little bit?

Taylor: You know, in the bigger picture, I don't think we could do that. We can't go to the manufacturers and basically have them change their mix. But we can do things that, you know, may drive that. If we can tell the manufacturer, "I got a call the other day from one of the manufacturers," and they said, you know, "How's the public accepting hybrids? You know, are they willing to pay a little more for them, because they're more expensive than conventional cars?" Which, by the way, we're not charging more for them than conventional cars.

And so that – in those kind of soft ways, we are doing that. But along with our fleet mix, we also contributed $25 million to the Danforth Plant Center here. We want to be a part of coming up renewable fuels. And in our 50th anniversary, we're planting 50 million trees over 50 years. Sustainable, we want it to be around over the next 50 years for the third generation. And that was not a thoughtless thing. That is about, you know, the environment and a statement about how important we feel that is.

Ryssdal: The vulnerabilities that Enterprise faces in the marketplace, I imagine there are a couple that are pretty easy to tick off: a rising price of gas would probably not be great for you guys; an economic slowdown impacting business travelers would probably not be great for you guys. What am I not thinking about? Where are the vulnerabilities that keep you up at night?

Taylor: Well, I sleep pretty well, first of all. But there are issues. You're absolutely right. Our business is affected when the public is driving less, and that could very well be because of higher fuel prices. We could also have an interruption in supply. I'm one of the few people in this building here who was around in the ‘70s when we had the two energy crises: your license plate ended up in an odd number; you filled up on an odd day. That's a supply crisis and that would be very bad for our business. And I don't think anybody in this country or the other four countries we operate would like that at all. So that is a concern.

Yes, if number two, business travel slows down, for instance, or just travel in general, i.e., a 9/11 kind of thing when the airlines – yes, that really hurts the business. Now, I've been asked – they say, "Wow, you're now concentrating more in airports." Well, it's still less than 25 percent of our overall business. So, you know, that's not as much of an issue.

The stuff I really – that I really worry about, though, is the culture piece. As we get to be a larger company, we don't want to lose what has brought us here today, which is this focus on customer satisfaction, employee engagement and satisfaction. And I think – I worry that if we get to be too big, then we might lose that. But, so far, you know, I thought we might lose it when we were at 50, you know, 50,000 cars. We're now over a million cars. I think that it's still there really, really strong, if not better.

Ryssdal: Along those lines, where is the opportunity for you to grow? You've just completed a huge acquisition. You're far and away the biggest rental car company in North America. Now what do you do?

Taylor: Well, we're going to grow those three brands. We now cover the spectrum in terms of customers in the various categories, which is absolutely exciting. We can cross-sell. Our corporate customers of National, for instance, now could access the huge local market, 6,000 plus branches of Enterprise here in the U.S. and still get all the things that, you know, National customers want to expect. Frequent flyer miles, etc., great service in the home city.

We've got truck rental going. We're doing more corporate business in local markets. We see plenty of opportunity here, and we're having fun right now.

Ryssdal: You've got presence in – significant presence in four other countries. Seems to me there's an opportunity there internationally that you guys haven't pursued. Why not?

Taylor: Well, if you look at the global car rental activity, more than half of it occurs in the United States. So that's the first part.

Ryssdal: Wow.

Taylor: Secondly, we've done very well in Canada. We've done well in the United Kingdom. We're on the Continent in Germany. We're very pleased about how all that has gone. But at the same time, we've done truck rental, introduced that, which is very successful. And so the focus of growing has been more at home, but in the future, globalization of some sort, we will have to see. The Alamo/National organizations have an agreement, an alliance with Europcar, who is all over the world, all over, I think, over 120 countries. So that's going to be a very interesting alliance opportunity.

So, you know, right now, you know, a lot of people ask me. They say, "You've gotten so big, you know, when's the party over?" Party's not over. It's going to continue. And if you talk to the third generation women that are coming up through the organization — I don't know if either of them will be next CEO — we're teaching them to be great stewards of the business. And I can assure you their plan is to continue to have the same culture and part of that is growth.

Ryssdal: Well, not to force you out in any way, but with that third generation coming, and with, clearly, things here progressing quite nicely according to you–

Taylor: Hum.

Ryssdal: How much longer you going to stick around? What's the point going to be where you say, "You know what? It's time for somebody else to do this."

Taylor: That's a very good question, and here's my answer to it. I had the very, very fortune of having a father that did it right and taught me how to do it. And he and I really managed the transition in a very positive, happy, constructive way for the business because, frankly, the family looks at the business as you've got to serve the business… because the business serves not only the family but all these other stakeholders: customers, employees for the most part.

So I think when my relevance and my contributions to the business are waning, I tell people around here, senior executives and other family members, "Please tell me if I don't recognize it myself because I will gladly, gladly let someone in to grow and nurture this fabulous jewel of a company."

Ryssdal: CEOs, no matter the company, Fortune 500 public or Fortune 500 private, have certain things they all have to do. You have to think strategy, and you have to communicate with customers, and you have to do all that stuff. How is your job as a CEO of a privately-held, family-owned and operated business different, perhaps, from the guy who's running GE?

Taylor: Oh, that's a tough question. I don't know what Jeff does every day, but I know–

Ryssdal: Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE.

Taylor: Yeah, that's right. Excuse me. Yeah, who I'm getting to know a little bit. But, you know, obviously, he has to think about strategy. And his focus is, you know, shareholder value along with Six Sigma and the quality that gives them a competitive edge. I spend probably more time with my – on family as it relates to business matters because I don't have 200,000 shareholders. So I do spend some more time on the family making sure that we're all on the same page about the business, making sure that we're educating the family on the business, and making sure that we will have great stewards of the family moving forward to take directorships or whatnot.

But what I think is my biggest value is the strategy of the business: making sure we have a great senior team, knowing our biggest customers, and spending time with them. That's the most fun part of my job, and I'm sort of out there, you know, pounding the drum about our culture because I want every branch manager to feel like it's his or her branch and that those customers are his or hers.

Ryssdal: Obviously, because you are privately-held, you don't have to worry about the daily fluctuations in the stock markets. I'm wondering, though, if you're at all troubled by the problems that the credit market's having and whether or not that's impacting you guys.

Taylor: We are very fortunate, because our balance sheet is such that even with the recent purchase, which by the way was accretive, because they're making money and they've done a very nice job with, frankly, very few resources — that's Alamo/National. But, no, the credit markets really haven't affected us to a great degree. Frankly, we are conservative and we run our company for the rainy days. And when you're around with two CEOs for 50 years, you tend to see bad times and you know they're coming and you prepare for them. And when others, you know, maybe aren't thinking about that. They think the good times are going to roll on forever. It's not the case.

Ryssdal: As you considered, in the course of the history of this company at various times, going public, was there one thing that made you say, "You know what? That's just not for us."

Taylor: There were times when we were – very, very few times – but there were a couple of years spread out over 50 years where, if certain events occurred, like some of the worrisome things such as an energy crisis, loss of value of the vehicles we pull out of service, so forth, that we needed the capital, that's – those are the times that made me think that, "You know, we ought to have that as a possibility because we don't want to let our stakeholders down by not having the money to grow and compete."

But some – when we have planned that a time or two, we – it does take a little bit of time. And, you know, after you're a couple months into it and you sort of see the next horizon, you say, "You know what? We're doing okay. Let's just keep sailing. Let's stay private. Let's just keep churning away, and let's keep investing most of the profits of this business back in the business," which is what we've done for 50 years.

Ryssdal: Andy Taylor is the chairman and CEO of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Andy, thanks a lot for your time.

Taylor: Thank you.

[NOTE: The text above is an extended excerpt of the interview and may have been edited. It should not be taken as a verbatim record.]

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