Another idea is to contact camping equipment suppliers in the Redding area (since you said you’re going near there) or perhaps RV rental agencies there. They may have better information.
Sorry, I should have read more carefully. I’ll fall back on the first part of my statement, consider that the contract may be saying that when you go off road, if you break it you own it.
Seems like this place rents 4x4s. You’d kind of think that they’d expect them to go off road.
Edit: Here are more links.
Q: What is the difference between a Jeep and a rental car?
A: Rental cars can go anywhere.
See Post #9.
CITY (your first link) is the mom-and-pop rental place I already tried. They said, Sorry, no dirt roads.
I will check out your second link. Thanks.
Wow, you really do seem to be up the creek here.
Maybe you should try to arrange a private rental. See if anyone knows someone who lives nearby who might be willing to rent you their SUV.
I would rent a pickup from U-Haul. Those things are always beat to shit already, I doubt they’d notice any difference.
There are good dirt roads and horrible dirt roads. If the Forest Service is renting the cabin out to people, I would think they know what kind of shape the road is in. After all, it isn’t in anyone’s best interest to have people getting stuck on the access route. I call ranger stations in advance to ask for road conditions and they usually provide good advice on how appropriate my vehicle is for the road in question. I’ve driven my Mazda 3 on “good dirt roads” in the Lassen area without a problem, but there are other roads I wouldn’t even consider without high clearance and 4WD.
(missed the edit window)
As far as driving a rental on a dirt road, I rent from National and have driven (carefully) on dirt roads without any consequences.
I’m a frequent Avis renter for work and often rent in St. Louis, MO. I like to go “exploring” and sightseeing when I travel for work, and with Google Maps on my iPad I have found some interesting levee roads near the Chain of Rocks Bridge along the old Route 66 (near Granite City, IL). The satellite view is great for this. I often get mud and dirt on the cars and reutrn them dirty. It’s never been a problem.
They upgraded me to a Jeep Wrangler once and I returned it caked and splattered with mud. No rock dings or damage, just mud that is readily hosed off. When I dropped it off that way, the lady said it’s good to see a Jeep used like a Jeep. The dirt was not a problem.
I make sure I treat the vehicles very well, without abusing them.
My current car is a Honda mini SUV. I’m hoping my next car will be a Jeep Grand Cherokee with the diesel engine. They should come out here in the US in the first half of this year, and then I’ll do some extensive exploring!
Exactly.
I’ve taken my wife’s VW Jetta on decent dirt roads near Hollister, CA.
Blondebear, it looks like you’re in my neighborhood. You may remember that before Hwy 152 over Pacheco Pass was widened and the flyover at the Hwy 156 junction was completed a few years ago, it often had traffic jams between Hwy 101 and I-5 during holiday weekends. They were terrible. I found a “road” that bypassed this mess, county road J-1 out of Hollister, through Tres Pinos and Paicines, and connecting with I-5 at the Panoche Road exit (where the Foster’s Freeze is). Some of it is dirt, and there’s a small water crossing, usually not deep. This road is impassible in wet weather. I’ve never had to turn around because the water crossing was to deep. I’ve taken this route about 25X over the last 10 years.
I first drove it in my mini SUV, and after a few times driving it I realized the Jetta could easily handle it, and it does.
When driving to L.A. I sometimes still take this route, even though Hwy 152 is great now. I do this for “fun”, for something different and a change of scenery. You’re mostly alone out in open country. It adds only 15 minutes to my L.A. drive and is worth the diversion on the six hour drive from Palo Alto. For much of the road, you can drive 55-60 and faster, even on the smooth dirt (when it’s straight and you can see far).
Use Enterprise Trucks (http://www.enterprisetrucks.com/locations.html). We regularly rent 4x4’s from them for work and we are almost always off road (I work in environmental compliance). The only problem we’ve ever had is returning them and the insides were covered in mud. Looks like they have San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento locations.
Does Enterprise Trucks specifically allow their vehicles to be driven off-road or is it that you’ve never had an accident or other damage to the vehicle while doing so?
I’ve worked in the car rental business and in my current job I still rent quite a few cars over the course of the year.
Check if it is specifically in regards to unpaved or off-road. Don’t know how to link to a pop-up window, but ran a search on the Hertz website and they specifically state “Generally, Hertz vehicles, including 4-wheel drives, are to be operated only on regularly maintained roads. Off-road use is a violation of the rental agreement.”
I wouldn’t worry about the unpaved road restriction too much. The major companies have too many cars on the road to bother with attempting to track who went off-roading and they really don’t care as long as you return the car in one piece at the end of the contract. I don’t recall any actual penalty in the contract beyond that going off road is a violation of the rental agreement.
However, as a violation of the rental agreement, if you find yourself in a restricted area in need of a tow or in an accident, the entire cost, regardless of whether you took out any of the company’s protections, is on you. It may even violate your own insurance or credit card protections that folks use sometimes.
Taking a Forestry Service maintained road would seem to be okay. But it may depend on who you get as a claims investigator if something were to happen.
We’ve had plenty of accidents and damage over the years and, generally, just pay for it out of pocket so that there is no claim. Not sure if we are getting special treatment… we may. We spend tens of thousands of dollars a year renting from them.
On the last project I was on, I had a crew in from another office and they had a truck from Hertz equipment rental. They had recently finished months of work up along the Snake River and the only issue we had was the amount of miles we had put on it. Probably 90% of which were off road.
I would expect an anti-off-road provision but I find it really hard to believe that rental companies have an across-the-board prohibition on graded, graveled, dirt roads. Such roads are found within the city limits of many fair-sized cities. You should definitely clarify what is meant by “unpaved road” (they may consider graveled roads paved) and get an exact description of the access road itself from the forest service.