Is it legal to keep property owned by a rental company?

What about a hand-truck from uhaul?  It had been painted, but the orange is showing.

I've known people who have ground down the letters in the loading base, and orange IS a popular color.
A heat-gun takes off the vinyl instructions.

U-Haul used to give a $25 credit (for buying packing tape, locks, boxes, etc). Don't know what their policy is now.

An appliance dolly of that type typically brings $65 to $75 when advertised on Craigslist and using a picture of a similar item with a different color.

What about a hand-truck from uhaul?  It had been painted, but the orange is showing.

Take a look at this cList ad from northern California. It has both an appliance dolly AND a platform dolly...both orange.

This was on 12/15/2013 so may be gone when you take a look after Dec.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/tls/4232057818.html

These big companys just write it off! You dont even know what a write off is. "Seinfeild 1996"

They were in the third locker I bought and I still use them.  Just not at a uhaul facility.  I guess whoever rented them lost a deposit.  So they have been paid for twice since I bought the locker they were in.  No plans to sell them they are to handy to have around.  May remove stickers and repaint them someday.

2 of the lockers I bought last week had dollys in them. One was a U-haul appliance dolly with a strap and the other was one that has the extra set of wheels up top and converts to a push cart. The U-Haul dolly wasn't purchased at a U-Haul auction, so as far as I'm concerned, it's my property now. I'll be keeping both dollys because they will make future moves much easier. The U-Haul dolly is super durable and the push cart dolly makes moving inside units a breeze.

Utah state lien law 38-8-3 subsection 10:

(10) A purchaser in good faith of the personal property sold to satisfy a lien as provided for in this chapter takes the property free of any rights of persons against whom the lien was valid and free of any rights of a secured creditor, despite noncompliance by the owner with the requirements of this section.

Seems pretty clear to me.  You bought it, you own it outright.  The person who leased the item in question still owes the company he leased it from, but they have no claim to collect the merchandise from you.  Elsewhere in the statute it calls out specific exclusions / restrictions for stolen property and anything with a VIN number.

Either way its probably not worth having to spend a day in court to prove ownership.  Repaint the thing and save yourself some trouble.   

One of the heavy hitters around here owns a Uhaul franchise out of his furniture store. He confiscates any Uhaul items he sees in units, saying that "by his contract with Uhaul he has to." I think it's a load of crap, but he gets away with it every time.