The Taylor family does still hold Enterprise privately, but don't buy their marketing-spin: Andy Taylor is a savvy and ruthless businessman.

Those "good protocols" you mention are actually sources of annoyance with Enterprise among frequent travelers. People who are used to Hertz's and National's "grab and go" rental processes can't stand the tedious process at Enterprise. Because for much of their history Enterprise's bread-and-butter demographic were people who never rent cars and are only renting because their insurance company is paying for a rental while their car gets fixed, Enterprise's procedures are designed to help people who need handholding through the rental process. Once you've rented a couple (or a couple dozen) times in a year, and especially after being used to renting with the premium brands where you select your own car and drive it to the gate and leave in a matter of seconds, you start to find Enterprise's 10-minute rental process aggravatingly inefficient and long.

They're friendly because they hire for it. It's not a family-friendly atmosphere; it's a cold, calculated business strategy. They only hire college graduates, and everyone they hire (aside from "car preps," the detailers in the back who wash the cars) is put on the management track. A new-hire at Enterprise is not a "rental sales agent" or "counter sales representative" or whatever like at other companies: the lowest position on the Enterprise totem pole is "Management Trainee" ("MT"). Enterprise is big on college campus recruiting, and they have cultivated an image in that arena of being a fast-track-to-success kind of workplace ("Our hands-on approach provides Management Trainees with the business know-how they might receive in an MBA program, without the debt. In fact, some of our employees have referred to it as an MBA without the IOU.” Real quote from an Enterprise exec.) That reputation and the high number of applicants they receive allows them to be very selective in whom they hire: they're looking for high-energy, enthusiastic, intelligent people who are willing to accept dirt for wages (starting around $30K, give or take depending on area) in exchange for future promises of a fantastic career either with Enterprise or with a fantastic resume that has Enterprise management experience on it.

They then proceed to basically brainwash these people into thinking that Enterprise is the greatest company on earth ("bleeding green," as it's called) and that they'll be promoted up the chain to Branch Manager, City Manager, and even RVP (Regional Vice President) if they can only get one more customer to buy LDW ("Six Figures In Six Years" is the internal mantra). Of course, that doesn't actually happen, so they get burned out and leave...I managed essentially the same crew for 10 years and developed them into a sales powerhouse (average incremental revenue per rental day sold hovered around $18, with my top performers regularly hitting $25--industry average is probably somewhere like $8), while the Enterprise that sat literally adjacent to our counter had probably a 500% turnover rate, maybe even a 1,000% turnover rate, across the same time period. (I quit bothering to get to know our neighbors because it was too hard to keep up with them. That said, I'm still Facebook friends with several of the older ones, and every last one of them is gone from Enterprise and glad to be so.)

Contrast that with the Avis/Budget/Hertz/Dollar/Thrifty/etc., which hire much like any other entry-level sales floor job hires...and don't exactly do a great job of hiring the best and the brightest. McDonald's-quality order takers seem to be par for the course at most rental operations. When you're hiring that caliber of people, you're not going to get a ton of enthusiasm for the job out of them, and they won't do much to go above and beyond to make the customer feel special.

That said, my operation found a lot of success hiring disillusioned former new-car car salespeople who liked the money but didn't like the horrible hours, the backstabbing/competitive atmosphere, etc., as people who had worked in that field knew all the steps to greeting and building rapport with customers and then recommending them products based on their needs and wants, all while making them feel happy and special and not "sold to." My top sales agent pulled down about $120K/year in commissions in a very short, seasonal market; I have no doubt that top agents a more consistent year-round market would be able to do substantially more. But we were definitely outliers in the rental industry--few operations had a focus on sales to the level we did, and poorly-trained $10/hr McDonald's order takers learning from poor training how to scare a few people into buying insurance tended to make maybe $30,000 a year.

Oh, and it's worth noting that Enterprise employees are salaried with no commission, so that $30K/year MT job is just that: $30K/year. Agents at every other rental company are commissioned on their counter sales (upgrades, insurance, gas, GPS devices, etc.). Enterprise got around having to pay their employees a commission by making the job all about their future career prospects. Once you did your "Grill" (a very difficult management/operations test) and got past the next "Management Assistant" stage to "Assistant Manager," your salary actually dropped but you started getting a bonus based on a combination of the branch's financial performance and the branch's ESQi score. Especially once you got to the Branch Manager position, it could get pretty lucrative--the Branch Manager at the location next to me was pulling down well north of $100K a year.