Wrecks are Rush's road to rentals.

• Position: Dick Rush, Enterprise Rent-A-Car Southeast, Charlotte, North Carolina

Wrecks are Rush's road to rentals

Dick Rush's sales may not match Avis', but that doesn't mean he isn't trying harder.

Rush, 43, runs Charlotte-based Enterprise Rent-A-Car Southeast, a rental service that operates in the Carolinas and on Georgia's coast. Enterprise leaves business travelers and tourists to the big wheels and goes after the local guy who needs something to get around in while his car is in the shop.

Instead of airports, Enterprise's offices are in neighborhoods and near dealerships. The average rate is $15 to $22 a day. "We are here month after month," Rush says, "with the same rates and the same clientele."

Rush has been around since the mid-'70s. After graduating from the University of Central Florida in 1971 and taking off on a whim to work on a tobacco farm near Waynesville, he accepted a job with the company's parent, St. Louis-based Enterprise Rent-A-Car, in his hometown, Orlando, Fla.

"I was a rental agent, washed cars, picked up customers," he says. "I did everything as the new man on the totem pole."

He climbed the pole fast enough. He rose to Orlando city manager, supervising five offices, and in 1984 was tapped to introduce Enterprise to the Carolinas.

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