NPR’s ‘Planet Money’ says they used to make their money by buying cars cheap and selling them used, why they had more than enough cars on hand. The pandemic shortages upended that and the renter pays the price.
Can rent an SUV for a week from Avis, $275, Seems pretty reasonable. full size truck $244.
I used to rent cars every other week or two for work. We had contract pricing it’s the rental companies and there were plenty of cars available. Towards the end of that period the selection narrowed considerably. For instance, Phoenix mostly had minivans, a few pickups, and almost no cars. Santa Barbara had mostly high end stuff, but that’s a small airport with a slim selection anyway. LAX always had plenty of everything and that’s to be expected at a large airport in a huge city. When I go to professional conferences, I always use public transit or shuttle buses. There is little sense in renting a car, leaving it at the expensive hotel garage, and then driving back to the airport. I even took Amtrak to Philly a few months ago. It cost $37 round trip from the BWI airport station and included transfers for the subway to a stop a half block from the hotel where the conference was held.
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Agree, especially these days with Uber and Lyft availability.
When I was travelling for work, there were times I wished Uber existed because of exactly that reason. Later in my career when travelling to our Munich office we contracted with a cab company to drive us back and forth. We typically travelled with at least 2 people for those trips. Much less stress, hassle and cost.
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The “economics of the car-rental business” is that it’s one of the biggest rip-offs on Earth. And that is why, if I was to travel, I would never rent a car. I also think travel is a waste of money, so I don’t do that very often.
You live in the USofA so that means you miss seeing a lot of wonderful National Parks plus many enjoyable places.
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On your death bed, which thought would go through your mind? “I wish I’d seen more of the world…” Or I wish I’d bought that pristine '84 Dodge K-car when it came up for sale…"
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Now that’s funny.
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Pre Covid I was renting 2-3 cars a month. Now post Covid I’m down to 6 a year. Right after Covid, rentals were very high. But now they are within $50/week of pre-covid (depending on city). Some places like Las Vegas the prices are about the same.
I expect that can still be done. Post-covid it’s probably difficult to find a used car that is in good operating condition with no serious problems; those cars are in high demand on the used car market. But the upside of all those gadgets and gizmos they put on newer cars these days, it should be possible to find basically sound used car on the cheap, one which has a gadget or gizmo failure and seems uneconomic to diagnose & repair to the “like new” state. So it seems like a show stopper. But a little diy’ering, plopping on a scan tool, giving up some of the unneeded functionality, and you’ve found a usable used car for peanuts. A lot of these sorts of car are basically given away to anyone who want them, b/c otherwise they are sitting unused, just taking up space.
What the Hell are you talking about . This not about buying cheap used vehicles. This is about the rental companies are not able to buy new fleets of vehicles as low cost as they used to . They also ended up with too many vehicles to sell.
Read the article !
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Show me a car dealer that is giving away cars because of inoperative features.
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So I guess you’re not interested in buying my time share in Boca Raton?
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I’ve told you already about the 2000 VW Beetle. After much trying, replacing parts, the owner has not been able to get the check engine light to turn off. Seems to be related to the EGR system. He gave up & tried to sell it, but hasn’t been able to find a buyer…
Which has nothing to do with this vehicle rental discussion .
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To be fair, I had a 1989 Dodge Aries, which I got from one of the neighbors here. It was a good running car, and I replaced a lot of parts on it to make it long-term reliable. Ultimately, I just didn’t have the time to drive that car much. It also wasn’t as much fun to drive as I thought it would be. I ended up giving that car to my father in law, because he needed a vehicle, and it was silly for me to have three cars and a truck for two people, while they only had one vehicle for two people. He still drives it every day, so the quality parts I put in are holding up.
I would NEVER buy, own, or accept as a gift any sort of property located in an HOA, and I would especially NEVER want any sort of timeshare.
Rental cars selling model has changed. They use to keep their vehicle just a couple years or up to 40k miles. Now they are keeping their cars much longer and I’ve rented cars from Avis with well over $70k miles.
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You can see all those places on the internet, or for more realism do it using a virtual reality device.
Snorkeling or diving on a coral reef is very much different than watching a video.
Catching a 40 pound fish is very different than watching a fishing program on TV.
Again none of this has to do with the business of renting cars.
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