Gary Paxton Steering For Dollar Thrifty

After a 10-year tenure as chairman and CEO of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, Joseph Cappy, 69, on Oct. 1 officially retired from the Tulsa, Okla.-based company and has been replaced by Gary Paxton, 57, formerly DTG president and COO of corporate operations and now president and CEO of the company. Cappy will remain a DTG director and become an advisor for senior management.

Thomas Capo, a director and former DaimlerChrysler executive, will become chairman of the board.

Under Cappy's leadership, Dollar Thrifty has grown and thrived, going public in 1997. "We've grown up," noted Donald Himelfarb, who has assumed the new position of chief administrative officer, with responsibilities for technology, fleet, legal and administrative services and also oversee the ongoing integration of the Dollar and Thrifty systems into a single operating company platform. "Joe Cappy was instrumental in taking this company from a small subsidiary of Chrysler, doing an IPO, to today well over a $1 billion revenue company with the leading profit margins in the industry."

Cappy said Paxton and Himelfarb were the key architects of the new business model for Thrifty, the formerly franchised brand that is in the process of becoming corporate owned.

The acquisition of franchises began last January and has enabled the company to avoid laying off employees during tough times in the travel industry, Paxton said. He added that Dollar Thrifty's fleet has grown by 15 percent this September compared with a year ago, an increase of 13,000 vehicles, and that the management team expects $100 million in extra revenue next year as a result of more corporate ownership of Thrifty locations.