For the last seven years, John Overholser has owned a Hertz franchise located at the Astoria Regional Airport in Warrenton, where hes also served as director. The standard rental price is $54 a day, although it can go from $30 to $70 and varies based on length and types of rentals. The office is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but staff is available at odd hours with prior notice. Call 503-325-7700 for information.

What do you do?

John: We rent cars to insurance rentals. We rent to people from the airport. We rent to people from the community. We rent to tourists as well. We rent just about any type of car people would want. We have midsize cars, compact cars, a few vans, occasionally … SUVs. We also rent to companies coming in to check out their facilities, like Fred Meyer. Pacific Seafood comes in quite often, Costco, the Wauna paper mill, Georgia Pacific, the Koch brothers we rent to them, when they come in to check their stuff.

Rich Rasmussen, employee: We get a lot of Coast Guard people, a lot of pilots.

How did you get started doing this?

John: This used to be Bob Lovells company. He had Lovell Auto and he kept on to the rental business. He held onto that when he sold Lovell Auto downtown. We started as subsidiaries of him or helping him out with renting cars at the airport for just a nominal sum. So we kind of got used to doing that, and then when Bob Lovell retired, we bought the business from him.

Whats the volume of your business?

Rich: It fluctuates a lot. It could be a couple cars a week, or we could have 20 or 30 rentals a week.

John: We own 11 cars now, and we keep those rented fairly consistently. About 75 to 80 percent of the time, theyre out. We get cars that come in from elsewhere, and then theyre available to rent back to Portland, Seattle, wherever anywhere in the nation, even to Canada. Peaks June, July, August, September, October. Of course, its seasonal. It drops off in the wintertime here.

How does the economy and weather affect your business?

John: We actually did fairly well in the recession. We cut down our number of cars, but we kept going. People hung on to their cars during the recession, thus there were breakdowns and wrecks. Because of the winters here, business is down in the winter, and just overall economic activity. But it doesnt disappear. We still do insurance rentals and still do the corporate stuff.

Rich: More people (vacationed) locally, which actually helped us a bit. The Coast Guard is real good in the winter. They do a lot of training out here. Some of the research ships rent cars. The Atlantis, I noticed, is going to be in, and we got some rentals from them, too.