Model T Put Them on Road to Success

According to the legend, it was in 1935--or maybe 1930 or ‘33--that a man in Van Nuys needed a truck and Sam Greenberg and his father had a 1925 Model T for sale.

But the man didn’t want to buy the truck just to make a move, so he offered $5 for one day’s use. “At the end of the day, they had a $5 bill in their hands and they still had a truck,” Sam’s son, Steve, explained years later. “The lightbulb went on.”

That was how the first equipment rental business was born at Van Nuys Boulevard and Oxnard Street. The facts of the legend had been blurred by the fluid memory of the company’s colorful founder, but 1935 was later picked as the beginning of Sam’s-U-Drive.

The company’s name was later changed by Steve Greenberg to Sam’s-U-Rent to reflect the diversity of equipment offered. And recently the entire company, with locations in Van Nuys, West Hollywood and West Los Angeles, was sold to an Orange County firm.

But Sam Greenberg, son of a blacksmith who headed the first Jewish family in the San Fernando Valley, left a broad legacy in the Valley. A self-made millionaire, his philanthropy, hard work and no-nonsense style were well-known in the community.

One of the more touching monuments to Greenberg’s charity is at New Horizon’s--officially known as the San Fernando Assn. for the Retarded--where he was a long-time supporter. His donations made possible a training kitchen at New Horizon’s North Hills facility where the mentally retarded could learn the skills needed to get jobs in the restaurant business.

The name is, appropriately, Sam’s Cafe.

For his support of New Horizon’s, which began because a high school classmate had a mentally retarded child, Greenberg received the Fernando Award in 1990. He died the next year at the age of 81 from a stroke while on an overseas trip.