I have a question for a Hertz employee or those in the know -- something I've been wondering for years and have never been able to figure out. Can you please explain how the registration/ownership of cars is handled over the life of the car? Let me explain..

I always look at license plates, and I pay attention to Hertz stickers. From what I can tell, cars are "owned" by certain stations (which may be all of Northern CA or all of Southern CA, Boston, NY etc) -- and registered and plated accordingly. However, given one-way rentals it doesn't take long for cars registered on one side of the country to end up on the other.

Most of the time I rent from Hertz in PDX, I end up with a local car -- but last weekend I had a Saturn Aura with AZ plates, originally from Phoenix, and 38K miles. It could have been anywhere over the last year with Hertz and I expect (hope) in the not too distant future Hertz will sell it (lots of Satura Auras on Hertz used lots these days). I doubt it will ever go back to Arizona. Is any effort ever made to send cars "back" to their home stations or is it completely luck of the draw?

I think it would be super interesting to see a "year in the life" of a few Hertz cars to see where they ended up around the Hertz system.

Thanks in advance for any insight. My wife thinks it is ridiculous that even remember what kind of car we rented let alone where the plates were from. What can I say..