Enterprise Rent-A-Car founder Jack C Taylor dies aged 94

Multi-billionaire Jack Taylor, who made his fortune after founding Enterprise Rent-A-Car in the 1950s, died aged 94 on Saturday after a short illness.

Taylor, who launched the company in St. Louis, Missouri in 1957, is estimated to have accumulated a wealth of about $5.3 billion according to Forbes, which listed him in the top 250 richest people in the world.

The Second World War veteran, who named his business after the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier, left the Navy and returned to St. Louis to sell Cadillacs during the postwar boom. “I had no thoughts about being the biggest, I just wanted to be the best,” he once said. He was promoted to manager, but Mr. Taylor had few ambitions in business until, at 35, he began to notice that cars leased by a Greyhound bus subsidiary in Chicago were making their way into town.

The business of leasing prompted Taylor to come up with a business idea, and by 1957, he founded a car leasing company with the dealership owner, Arthur Lindburg. By 1980, the rental fleet had expanded to 6,000 cars, and less than a decade after that, it had grown to 50,000. In 1995, Enterprise Rent-A-Car was making $2 billion in revenues. The business differed from competitors by allowing people to pick up and drop off cars away from airports. The company earned $19.4 billion in revenue in 2015, more than double of its two chief competitors, Hertz, and Avis.

The company reshaped the car rental market by opening locations in urban neighborhoods rather than at airports and its door-to-door pick-up strategy.