Hertz Global Holdings

Hertz traces its origins to Walter L. Jacobs, who began renting cars from a small Chicago lot in 1918, and to John D. Hertz, the European founder whose name the company carries. Hertz was born Sándor Herz in 1879 in Skalica, in what is now Slovakia and was then part of Austria-Hungary. He emigrated as a child in 1884 and rose in Chicago through the taxi business, founding the Yellow Cab Company in 1915. In 1923 he bought Jacobs’ car rental business and built it into a national brand, the Hertz Drive-Ur-Self System. The Hertz name has remained the dominant identity of car rental in the United States ever since.