USA out of state, one-way car rental

Dirk_Gently_2

I'm putting together a "road trip" in September, stating in Utah and ending up in San Francisco 14 days later.

All the car hire quotes I've looked at so far are placing a loading of approx USD300 or more on this because I'm dropping the car in a different state to where I picked it up.

Does anyone know of any rental companies who don't charge this - or at least charge a bit less for it?

Thanks in advance for any assistance anyone can give.

jackieblack

I know several companies don't charge fees for one-way drop offs between Nevada/Arizona/California - could you arrange your trip to take advantage of this?

ETA I think Murphy_The_Cat has a thread on his planned trip, which IIRC is quite similar, if you can find that his threads are usually full of useful/helpful info

Inksleeves

The loading is done per mile for a One-Way.

Can you break up your booking? Pick car up in one state, drop off at earliest point in a state with no one-way fees and then pick up a new car, if you get my drift?


So you'd pick up in Utah, drive to somewhere like Needles in Cali and drop off your first car.
Then pick up a new booking for the trip to SF, there would be no fee for that leg.

Dirk_Gently_2

Inksleeves wrote: »

The loading is done per mile for a One-Way.

Can you break up your booking? Pick car up in one state, drop off at earliest point in a state with no one-way fees and then pick up a new car, if you get my drift?


So you'd pick up in Utah, drive to somewhere like Needles in Cali and drop off your first car.
Then pick up a new booking for the trip to SF, there would be no fee for that leg.

Yeah, that's an idea I'll look at. In fact I'm in Vegas for 3 days in the middle so rather than pay to rent a car sitting in the lot for 3 days that would be the best place to do it. I hope I don't then get two one-way charges (Utah to Nevada and Nevada to SFO).

ferf1223

sometimes a weekly rental isn't much more than a 3 or 4 day rental so that may impact pricing in splitting it up...may work if you're clever about it.

you should be able to find one with no one-way at last Nevada to SFO...I know that in the past when we have used rentalcars.com between CA and NV if the agency we ended up with did charge a one-way fee, we called and asked rentalcars.com about options with no one-way fee and they swapped us to a different agency...if memory serves saved $300 paid £12 or £18 more for the rental...they were really helpful.

we find having a car in Vegas is a great thing...but I suppose we don't normally do it as part of a long road trip...woudln't do Vegas without a car but that's just us.