Hertz Taps New CEO to Guide Its Way Out of a Viral Mess

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

Rental car giant Hertz, which recently struck a deal with creditors amid debt incurred by the coronavirus pandemic, has a new CEO.

Paul Stone, formerly the company’s executive vice president and North American chief retail operations officer, was named to the top spot on Monday. There, he’ll face a full plate, though saving the company will be Job One.

As we told you earlier in the month, Hertz Global Holdings, which isn’t alone in the virus-born cratering of rental fleet usage, has struggled to cope with mounting dept. The deal struck with creditors afforded the company an extended grace period in which to get a handle on its financial situation. Restructuring experts were brought in. Its workforce faced a cull long before that.

Last week, Hertz took the drastic but clearly necessary step of cancelling much of its planned fleet turnover, scrapping 90 percent of the new-car orders it expected to make in the interest of fresh lot fodder. The company held roughly 567,600 vehicles in its U.S. fleet and 204,000 in its international unit in 2019.

Kathryn V. Marinello, who led the company for more than three years, plans to stay with the ship for up to a year.

“Paul brings a customer-centered approach to growing the business that is driven by process excellence and employee engagement,” said Hertz Chairman Henry R. Keizer, Hertz’s Chairman in a statement. “Having successfully run our largest business segment for the last two years, Paul helped strengthen our brands by elevating service standards across the North American car rental operations.”

Before joining Hertz in 2018, Stone, 50, served as senior vice president at Cabela’s — a business your author quite enjoys visiting.

Shortly before Monday’s announcement, Hertz got the jump on the Memorial Day weekend by introducing “Hertz Gold Standard Clean” on Friday — an “enhanced vehicle cleaning and sanitization process that concludes with each vehicle being sealed and certified ‘Hertz Standard Gold Clean’ before each rental.” The 15-point process conforms to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, the company claims.

This, a new vehicle delivery service, and touchless rental options are just some of the ways Hertz plans to lure Americans out of their homes and onto the road this summer. If you’re really worried about the ‘rona, we’d suggest leaving that a/c button untouched and keeping the windows up when parked. Let the summer sun bake the virus away.

[Image: Hertz]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Redapple Redapple on May 18, 2020

    Enterprise is my favorite. Better selection & newer. Avis, budget national etc. Seems like ALL the cars I ve rented had 30,000 real hard miles on em.

    • Art Vandelay Art Vandelay on May 18, 2020

      I'm National Executive Elite and I can't remember the last time I had anything with over 10k on it. My last one was a Challenger R/T with 18 miles in Arizona. I broke it in.

  • Piratethecat Piratethecat on May 20, 2020

    I'm getting Jaguar F-Pace vibes from the rear end. Something about the taillights.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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