OUR HISTORY

The year was 1971. While relaxing in his front yard after a long day’s work, our founder was listening to his neighbor tell him a story about his failed attempts to rent a truck. He had spent the day with a wad of cash in his pocket, looking to rent a pickup truck to help his daughter move into her new apartment.  He said It didn’t matter how much money he had, no one would rent him the truck because he didn’t have a credit card. In an effort to help his neighbor, our founder joined in the search for a company that would help. There simply wasn’t one. At that time, if you didn’t have a major credit card, there wasn’t a rental car company in Phoenix willing to rent you a vehicle.   Speculating that his neighbor was not the only honest, hardworking person without a credit card needing to rent a vehicle, our founder began to slowly build a company focused on meeting the needs of this previously neglected segment of the market.

Initially, he bought a few used cars and pickup trucks and began renting them to people just like his neighbor—people who needed a pickup truck to move furniture, folks whose car was in the shop for repairs, and families needing a larger vehicle to travel to California. In the more than 45 years since then, the company has grown and so has the customer base. For example, people with credit cards who qualify to rent at the national companies often come to us instead. Because when basic, dependable transportation will do just fine, they find it isn’t necessary to pay brand new prices.  We have discovered over the years that the reasons to rent from an independent, reliable used van and SUV rental company are as varied as the customers. Our renters include:

• people who have credit cards but want the cheapest rental possible
• people who only have a debit card
• people with bad credit history, or other credit issues
• people who don’t have a debit card and can only pay cash
• people who are dead-set against paying outrageous airport concession fees

In addition to the customer base growing over the past four decades, our fleet has grown from those few cars and pickup trucks to include hundreds of vehicles, including cars, large passenger vans, minivans, and SUVs.

A lot of things have changed in the last four decades, including the introduction of debit cards. And while we do accept those as well as cash and credit cards, the foundational goal that gave rise to Phoenix Car Rental is still the same. We do everything we can to rent to qualified renters who, whether due to credit issues, age restrictions, or lack of a credit card, cannot rent elsewhere.