Mark Shoen named richest person in the history of Arizona

PHOENIX — A study on the country’s richest individuals revealed that Mark Shoen’s net worth of $3.14 billion is the highest in the history of Arizona.

The study weighed the history of each state’s wealthiest person, accounting for inflation and other factors, placed Shoen ahead of Robert Gore from Utah and Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta of Nevada, but behind Jeff Bezos from New Mexico and Donald Bren of California.

Shoen earned his fortune as the largest shareholder of Amerco through a limited partnership. Amerco is the parent company of U-Haul, according to Forbes.

He tends to keep a low profile but has stayed on good terms with his brother Joe Shoen, who is the president and chairman of Amerco.

Joe Shoen took over U-Haul from his father in 1986 after worries that his father was ruining the company. Mark Shoen sided with his brother during the take over.

Mark Shoen earns an additional income as the owner of a private self-storage operation which does business with U-Haul.

Bezos makes the list being born in New Mexico, despite earning his fortune as the CEO of Amazon, which is based in Seattle. Bezos was one of four people on the list whose net worth topped $100 billion.

The other three were Sam Walton of Oklahoma, Richard Mellon Scaife of Pennsylvania and John D. Rockefeller of New York.

There were seven states whose richest person was worth less than $1 billion.

Follow @KTAR923