Toyota expands -- and tends to growing pains

So if, because of your own incompetence, you cause a line stoppage at Toyota, they reward you? Seems unlikely to me.

Ed

The most likely reason why the rental companies bought GM and Fords is that GM and Fords used to own some of the large rental companies and even after they sold them off GM and Ford gave them cars for almost nothing to keep their factories humming. If GM or Ford gave me their cars for nothing I would probably drive them too.

"Almost nothing" is an exaggeration, but cars were sold to rental car companies only a little over the incremental cost to produce the vehicles. Given the UAW contracts which required workers to be paid around 95% of their normal wages whether they were building cars or not, it is easy to see why Ford, GM, and Chrysler would decide to keep the workers busy building fleet cars rather than let them sit around idly. Unfortunately, this strategy had a very real dark side. The rental car companies turn their fleets over very quickly, so they are constantly dumping a lot of low mileage good condition cars on the market. These compete directly with new cars from the domestic manufacturers. Chrysler has been particularly hard hit because their dealers find it more profitable to sell used "program cars" rather than new models. Ford and GM have now cut their work forces down significantly, so the need to keep workers busy has decreased. Both Ford and GM are cutting low profit fleet sales. This has had negative affects on their market share, but in the long run it is a very necessary step.

One funny thing - although Ford used to own Hertz, the only two times I rented cars from Hertz, I got Toyotas (but the rentals were in Hawaii).

Ed