This also involves driving an orange and white Home Depot billboard/truck and a decent probability that you just spent money buying things at Home Depot for which you now need a short term rental.

A traditional rental car has neither of those corporate advantages and therefore has the situation described above about cancellations.

Their point is that the process can be smooth and fast. Not necessarily that people should rent from Home Depot.

And their point is that the process is smooth and fast because of the constraints that don't exist in the market at large.

The process is just about the same for Uhaul and that has none of the "enable people to do more business with you" motive that the home depot rental truck does.

That's exactly how easy a traditional rental is. They require a credit card and driver license, and takes about 10 minutes to process. The rest of it-- waiting in line, long walk to the lot, is only because the car rental company has much higher quantities (of cars and customers) to manage. And Home Depot is far more likely to have all trucks occupied than a car rental company.

A van from U-Haul is a fraction of the price of car rental companies. You can rent a van for 7 days from U-Haul for only $139.65 and $.69/mile. For that price I don't care what the hell it looks like.

Which shuttle stand does the courtesy bus to U-Haul leave from outside the arrivals terminal?

Well none but at the same time I find the level of obvious exploitation people will accept for momentary convenience strange but that's just me. Personally I just don't get it.

And get 10mpg driving it.

Last time I rented a van from hertz I selected the location to collect from (self storage place), the time to pick up, and drop off (2 hours later), and then picked it up.