Can't Miss It

Sam and Anna did.

Sam and Anna had started a new business in Oregon … and things were going ok until disaster struck … one night Sam was driving along towing one of his products behind him which was painted black … he was turning left at a four way stop when an on-coming car hit him because that driver just couldn’t see the unit Sam was towing … thankfully no one was seriously hurt … but the product was damaged … and Sam was worried it would happen again and again. So he and Anna got to thinking … maybe this was an opportunity. And they came up with a crazy idea … instead of painting the unit black they’d paint their products the bright colour of highway signs so everyone could see them … and then they thought maybe let’s put business name on them too. The rest is history.

Today, over 70 years later, the business Sam and Anna Shoen started, with all their products initially being black until an accident encouraged them to change the colour is now iconic across North America … because every one of their nearly 300,000 units has the same orange colour … U-Haul.

U-Haul is a great idea because unexpected problems can become unexpected opportunities … if you just move on them.