Little more than a year had passed since Chrissy Taylor, granddaughter of the company's founder and daughter of its longest-serving CEO, had been promoted, in December 2019, to CEO of Enterprise Holdings, the parent company of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Taylor had spent her entire career in the family-owned business, but like all Enterprise employees, she started as a management trainee at a branch office. "Just like everybody else in our upper management, I started behind a rental counter," Taylor said in an interview at the time of her promotion. "I worked my way up in various roles, learning the job by doing it: washing cars, picking up customers." She was determined to continue the legacy of her family's company, which her father famously described as being committed to three things: "listening to and satisfying our customers, creating opportunities for our employees, and achieving long-term, sustainable growth."

An industry adage held that "there are two types of rental car companies: those that lose money and Enterprise." The company that would become Enterprise Rent-A-Car was started in 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri, by Jack Taylor. Taylor set up Enterprise offices in neighborhoods rather than at airports because he believed that Americans would welcome a local option for renting cars when their own vehicles were being repaired. In 2010 Enterprise had more than 6,000 rental locations in the United States and a fleet of 850,000 cars in service. Its parent, Enterprise Holdings (comprising Enterprise, National, and Alamo brands) accounted for nearly half of the car rental market and was more than twice the size of Hertz, the number two competitor. Enterprise's competitive advantage was the result of the combination of its practices in hiring, training, compensation, organization, customer service, IT, and fleet management, among others.