| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Car rental |
| Founded | Ypsilanti, Michigan, U.S. (1946) |
| Founder(s) | Warren Avis |
| Headquarters | Parsippany-Troy Hills Twp, NJ, U.S. |
| Number of locations | ~4900+ (as of 2007) |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Ronald L. Nelson (Chairman) & (CEO) F. Robert Salerno (President), (COO) & (Director) David B. Wyshner (CFO) & (Executive Vice President) |
| Revenue | US$ 5.986 Billion (2007) |
| Operating income | US$ -992 Million (2007) |
| Net income | US$ -916 Million (2007) |
| Total assets | US$ 12.474 Billion (2007) |
| Total equity | US$ 1.465 Billion (2007) |
| Owner(s) | Avis Budget Group |
| Employees | 30,000 (2008) |
| Website | Avis.com |
Avis Rent a Car System, LLC is a car rental company headquartered in Parsippany-Troy Hills Township, New Jersey, United States.[1] Avis, Budget Rent a Car and Budget Truck Rental are all units of Avis Budget Group.
Avis Budget Group operates the Avis brand in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, India, Australia and, New Zealand. Recently Avis has acquired Avis Europe plc which once was a separate corporation licensing the Avis brand. Avis is the second largest car rental agency in the world preceded by Hertz Corporation.
Since the late 1970s, Avis has featured mainly General Motors (GM) vehicles such as Chevrolet and Cadillac, but today also rents popular non-GM brands including Ford and Toyota.
Avis is a leading rental car provider to the commercial segment serving business travellers at major airports around the world, and to leisure travellers at off-airport locations. Many of the off-airport locations are franchised operations rather than company-owned and -operated, as is the case with most airport locations. Avis was the first car rental business to be located at an airport.[2]
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The company was founded in 1946 with three cars at Willow Run Airport,[3] Ypsilanti by Warren Avis (August 4, 1915 – April 24, 2007[2]). It established branch operations across the United States over the next few years, becoming the second largest car rental company in the country by 1953. By its tenth anniversary in 1956 it had opened its first international offices in Europe, Canada and Mexico.
Their corporate motto is "We Try Harder" It was adopted in 1962[4] (during the tenure of Robert Townsend as its CEO) to make a more positive reference of Avis' status as the second largest car rental company in the US, at the expense of its larger competitor The Hertz Corporation. In 1972, Avis introduced Wizard, the first computer-based information and reservations system to be used in a US car rental business; to this day, almost all frequent Avis customers are identified by their unique "Wizard number". In 1981, the company instituted its system of vehicle tracking, that was not coincidentally named Advanced Vehicle Identification System (AVIS).
Avis has been owned by a number of other companies over the years, along with several periods of being a public company. These include:
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