A thrift word, a franchise system and a Tulsa base.

Thrifty Car Rental dates its start to 1958. The International Directory of Company Histories, in its 1999 entry on Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, says the company was founded that year, and the brand’s own “General information” page, archived in 2015, gives the same date. The Directory describes Dollar and Thrifty in the late 1990s as value-priced brands aimed at leisure travellers, small businesses and independent business travellers, and English Wikipedia still describes Thrifty in much the same terms.

What set Thrifty apart in that account was how it was organised. The Directory says Thrifty concentrated on franchising and franchise-support services, earning most of its revenue from franchise fees and from leasing cars to its franchisees, and that it typically ran company-owned stores only where a franchisee had failed. Franchisees served both airport and local markets in their territories, so a single owner could run several Thrifty locations in one area and move cars between them.

The business acquired new owners at the start of the 1980s. The Museum of Tulsa History, in its Tulsa Hall of Fame entry for William E. “Bill” Lobeck, who was inducted in 2010, says that in 1981 Lobeck and partners purchased Thrifty, and that under his leadership the company completed a public offering in 1987. The brand’s own page gives the same year for its initial public offering. The museum says Lobeck had earlier led the Dallas-based rental company American International, and that he began his career in car rental in Norfolk, Virginia.

The Directory describes Thrifty’s reservation centre as headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, staffed around the clock and linked to the main airline reservation systems, which in turn connected it to travel agents around the world. It also records partnerships that put Thrifty counters in unusual places: rental facilities in many of Montgomery Ward’s Auto Express Centers in the United States, and a similar arrangement with Canadian Tire in Canada. The same entry says Thrifty Truck Rental and Ryder Consumer Truck Rental formed a North American alliance to recruit each other’s dealers as franchise owners, and that Thrifty served as the official car-rental company of the United States Figure Skating Association and of the Black Coaches Association.

Chrysler, Dollar Thrifty and Hertz.

The late 1980s brought Thrifty into a carmaker’s orbit. The New York Times reported on 24 May 1989, in an Associated Press item, that Thrifty Rent-A-Car System had agreed to be acquired by the Chrysler Corporation, and that Thrifty would in turn buy the Ohio-based Snappy Car Rental, which specialised in replacement cars for insurance claims. The Museum of Tulsa History says Lobeck stayed on as president and chief operating officer after Chrysler bought the company, and that he formed Pentastar Transportation Group to hold Chrysler’s rental businesses. Thrifty’s own page says it was acquired by Chrysler in 1989, along with Dollar Rent A Car. The 1999 Directory entry gives 1989 for the purchase in one section and 1991 in another.

Chrysler grouped its rental companies under Pentastar, which, the Directory says, also held General Rent-a-Car and Snappy. It merged General into Dollar in 1993 and sold Snappy in 1994. Unable to sell Thrifty and Dollar separately, Chrysler reorganised them as the Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, which completed its initial public offering on 23 December 1997 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The Directory stresses that the group meant to keep the separate operating and brand identities of Dollar and Thrifty, even while they shared purchasing, information systems and some administration, and that each accepted reservations for the other abroad.

The last change of owner came in 2012. The brand’s own page, archived in 2015, says that in November 2012 Hertz Global Holdings acquired Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, and that Hertz has since run its rental business through the Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty brands. English Wikipedia gives Thrifty’s headquarters today as Estero, Florida, the home of its parent. The Hertz Corporation has owned Thrifty since 2012, the company says.

Counters, buses and lots.

A car-rental brand is met in a handful of places before anyone sits behind the wheel: an airport sign pointing to a counter or a garage level, the counter itself, a shuttle bus that loops between terminals and lots, and the lot signage that marks rows, return lanes and exits. Each is a different surface with a different job, from a backlit panel read from across a terminal hall to a painted bus side seen in motion and a small paper or plastic key tag handed over at the end of the process.

That spread of surfaces is what a rental wordmark, its colours and any symbol beside it have to cover, at very different sizes and distances. The same name may appear on a uniform, a bay marker, a receipt and a mobile app, and the business behind it may have changed hands more than once since the sign was first painted.

Each guide that follows sets out who started the name, who has owned it since and how its marks have changed, and separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself.

A one-word promise on many owners’ signs.

Thrifty is a rental name that is also an everyday adjective. As the Directory records, most Thrifty locations in the late 1990s were run by franchisees rather than by the company, so the same name appeared on signs, counters and lots owned by many different operators.

The brand has also lived alongside a sibling for most of its recent history. From Chrysler’s purchase of Dollar, which the Directory dates to 1990, to the Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group of 1997 and the Hertz group after 2012, Thrifty and Dollar have shared an owner while keeping separate names, and the Directory describes keeping those identities apart as a deliberate aim. Today the Thrifty name sits beside Hertz and Dollar in the same group.

Its loyalty programme takes a financial phrase in the same spirit as the name. English Wikipedia says Thrifty introduced its Blue Chip express rental programme in the United States and Canada in 2008, with faster pick-up and return and dedicated lines at the counter.

For a design guide, Thrifty shows how a single descriptive word can carry a brand across franchisees, carmakers and rental groups without changing, and how two sibling names can be kept apart inside one owner. Compare it with Hertz, the group that has owned it since 2012, and National Car Rental, which William Lobeck’s group bought in 1995 after his years at Thrifty. For this guide we use franchise blue, sky and lot white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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