Every Major Rental Car Brand Is Owned By These 3 Companies: Here's How That Happened

You step off the plane, drag your luggage through the terminal, and are greeted by an array of brightly colored logos. You've got the green of National, the yellow of Hertz, the red of Avis, and a buckshot of budgeteers like Thrifty, Alamo, or Dollar. On the surface, it feels like the competition is overwhelming, but just like the cereal aisle at your grocery store — all those options on the shelves lead to the same couple of major brands. But let's be real for a second — that perception of choice is a curated illusion.

The majority of the U.S. rental car market is controlled by just three companies: Enterprise Mobility, Hertz Global Holdings, and Avis Budget Group. It was not always set up like this, however. Back in the day, automakers actually owned some of these companies to dump inventory. Ford bought Hertz in 1987 to help move units, so the lineage of those Hertz-themed Fords ran deeper than you may have thought. But after decades of mergers and buyouts, the market turned into what it is today.

Calling them rental car-tels may seem harsh, but the term starts to make sense when you realize they dominate airport terminals, control supply and demand, and can easily ruin a family vacation — not to mention hidden fees and other shady practices, such as Hertz's AI-powered damage scanner. And while it might feel like you're shopping around for the best deal between Alamo and Enterprise, the money is all funneling up to the same bank account anyway.

If this were a game of Monopoly, Enterprise Mobility would be the guy who bought all the properties while everyone else was fighting over who would get to Boardwalk first. As the largest company by market share and fleet size, it is the undisputed heavyweight champion of rental. Oh, and unlike its publicly traded counterparts who have to answer to shareholders, Enterprise is privately held by a single family.

For you business grads, Enterprise Mobility's portfolio is a lesson on segmentation. National Car Rental is at the top, poised as a premier brand for the business traveler who is allergic to waiting in lines and willing to pay for speed. Then you have the flagship Enterprise Rent-A-Car (ERAC), which dominates the neighborhood market and is the go-to when your daily driver is in the shop. With estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) suggesting 17,000 accidents happen every day and an Enterprise brick-and-mortar around the corner, that's a pretty great revenue stream. Finally, there is Alamo, the junior varsity brand that targets a budget customer who just wants to get to Disney World without taking out a second mortgage.

Okay, so Enterprise has a few brands; what's so special about that? The genius here isn't just the branding or the placement; it's the waterfall. A brand new vehicle enters the fleet at National for the high-paying suits. Once it racks up some miles, it cascades down to Enterprise for general use. When it gets a little tired, it ends up at Alamo for the budget hunters. It's a brilliant way to squeeze every cent of revenue out of a Chevy Malibu before sending it to the great auction block.

Hertz is the icon of the group — the one with the most turbulent history and the coolest cars. It sits in the middle of the three by market share today, but it hasn't had a smooth ride otherwise. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2020 when the pandemic economy did its thing, but found its way through it. Hertz also operates with a tiered structure to compete with Enterprise, using Dollar Rent A Car for the mid-tier family market and Thrifty for the bargain hunters. 

For the gearheads, Hertz has always been the interesting one, known for historically pushing high-performance rentals. Hertz even had a "Rent-A-Racer" program at one point in time, but the present stance of the company is far from the glory days of limited edition Mustangs. More recently, Hertz tried to bring back the Hertz Edition Mustang to match their new EV strategy, rolling out a limited-edition Mach-E in the classic Hertz livery and pivoting hard into the future with a massive bet on EVs. Unfortunately, the execution was flawed and even after selling off tens of thousands of EVs the company reflected a loss of $2.9 billion from the program.

Rounding out the triumvirate is Avis Budget Group, with a market strategy that is more of a one-two punch — Avis attacks the corporate types with its "We Try Harder" slogan, while Budget exists to make casual travelers feel like they're getting a deal on the exact same cars.

But apparently, that wasn't enough market saturation. To make sure it didn't lose out on the absolute bottom dollar, Avis bought up Payless Car Rental in 2013 to fight in the mud with the bare-bones discount desks. Avis even hedged against the concept of car ownership entirely by buying Zipcar, just in case the urban market decides they prefer hourly billing over actually owning something. With $1,000 per month car payments now the expectation, maybe the company is onto something here.

The next time you're dragging a carry-on to the airport rental center and cross-referencing prices on your phone, just remember that the game is rigged. It's mostly an illusion of choice designed to make us feel like savvy consumers rather than captive audiences. Whether you think you snagged a deal with a discount brand or splurged on a premium name, that cash is almost certainly flowing up to the same three overlords. You aren't really shopping around for a better product — you're just picking which color line to stand in while you wait for a Nissan Altima that smells vaguely of regret. All thanks to the great American pastime, capitalism.