US car hire

[Ant_]

Any tips on getting a sensible price for US car hire? best I can find is about £100 a day, I need a Washington DC pick up and Orlando drop off over six days, the one way fees are doubling the price!

Thanks

[Gary]

https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/car-hire-tips/page/7/#post-351102
This thread has plenty of tips.

[Lady London]

Interstate dropoff so unlikely ever to have been cheap even pre current pricing.

[ChrisC]

Lady London wrote:

Interstate dropoff so unlikely ever to have been cheap even pre current pricing.

Depends on the city pairs involved.

If there is a lot of traffic say between LAS and LAX or SFO then it’s relatively cheap because cars will get back to their home bases relatively quickly but perhaps not so many people wanting to drive from Florida to DC so requires the car hire to pay to get the car “home”

[dougzz99]

ChrisC wrote:

Depends on the city pairs involved.

If there is a lot of traffic say between LAS and LAX or SFO then it’s relatively cheap because cars will get back to their home bases relatively quickly but perhaps not so many people wanting to drive from Florida to DC so requires the car hire to pay to get the car “home”

Hertz/Avis pre-pandemic always had grouped states, so California/Arizona/Nevada was treated as single state for one-ways.

But yes FL to DC is going to likely be paying a hefty fee.

[berneslai]

Most sensible prices I’ve found are on US Car Hire (not the most original name). Get the app for the cheapest deals – one way fees are usually just $50 but might be different in your case.

[PGW]

berneslai wrote:

Most sensible prices I’ve found are on US Car Hire (not the most original name). Get the app for the cheapest deals – one way fees are usually just $50 but might be different in your case.

I’m also a fan of US Car Hire but the drop off charge for this trip will be at least $250.

[Paul]

Gary wrote:

The car hire tips thread

<iframe class=”wp-embedded-content” sandbox=”allow-scripts” security=”restricted” style=”position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);” title=”“The car hire tips thread” — Head for Points” src=”https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/car-hire-tips/embed/#?secret=BomSvlGvH7&#8243; data-secret=”BomSvlGvH7″ width=”500″ height=”282″ frameborder=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″ scrolling=”no”></iframe>
This thread has plenty of tips.

The issue is airport pick up and drop off and it is this that I find drives up the costs. I use the hertz.com.au link to book, and in May, my one way fee for DC to Manhattan was $55 which is the norm. I must say the tolls to drive to Manhattan from DC were eye wateringly expensive adding at least another $50 plus to the bill, with notification being dragged out over weeks. My pick up was the Renaissance hotel and drop off midtown Manhattan.

Taxis in DC are reasonable and its about $30 from DCA to central DC. There is also an excellent underground system that serves DCA but I am not sure about IAD as the last time I flew out of that airport, it was on board Concorde, so a very long time ago!!

[NorthernLass]

I paid about £100 extra for an 18-day hire, collecting in Key West and returning to MIA. Unusually, the best price I could find was with Budget via ba.com and I thought I’d better snap it up as there may be little rental inventory over Xmas/New Year. We normally get an SUV as we don’t travel light but prices were stratospheric (over £3k) so settled for the biggest saloon car, which was 1/3 of that.

[Carlos_Fandango]

Try booking.com. I have a Ford SUV for 9 days in September, fully loaded with insurance, zero excess, pick-up in Sacramento (rather than San Fran) all for £270.