I am driving across the country in a rental car with my 18 year old son & would like him to do some of the driving. But I just learned that the rental car company I usually use (Hertz) will not allow him to drive the car and I don’t want to do all the driving. Is there a rental car company out there that will let an 18 year old drive the car?
Google is failing me because the search results I get always turn up 18 year olds who want to rent a car, but I am renting it…just want him to share in the driving. I don’t want to have to call every rental company out there, wait on hold forever, then get told ‘nope only over 21 can drive the car’, so I’m hoping one of you Dopers will know the answer. TIA
It looks like you would need him to rent the car and have you as the additional driver. Due to his age your rental options are limited and a extra charge will apply.
You might find a local non-chain or regional-chain place that will allow it. But these sorts of places sometimes have geographical limitations on where you can drive the car, typically the state where you rent it and the bordering states. Since you want to drive across country, be sure to inquire about geographical limitations.
Another suggestion: Find the poor neighborhood in your area and go to the “Buy Here Pay Here” used car place. Have your son buy a car there and pay in advance for however many weeks you need it. Then at the end of the trip, drop off the car at the dealer. The business model of these sorts of places depends on selling the car frequently and repossessing it when the payments stop being paid. They will be grateful to you for not making them send the repo-man to find the car.
I rented from a used car dealer and took the car from Dayton Oh to Boston. It was an older car and if It broke down I was on my own. But I didn’t have a credit card at the time and he was the only one that would just take cash for a rental. Luckily all I did was run over a deer carcass in the road, no discernible damage.
Why not? I never get the insurance from the car rental place, my own auto insurance covers me. Does the 18 year have insurance for another car already? Would that transfer to the rental?
Depends on the state. Some states the insurance follows the actual car, while in other states the insurance covers the driver no matter what car they drive.
Do you really want your 18 year old driving you across country? I just made a trip to NYC and offered to let my GFs 17 year old son drive part of the way thru rural Pennsylvanian on the turnpike and he said no. He felt it would be to tiring since his attention span is limited due to constant social media and interaction. He either didn’t want to be disconnected from his precious phone or didn’t want to have to drive with me sitting there white knuckled.
You’re definitely going to have better luck with less mainstream rental agencies, as in NOT Hertz, Avis, Budget, etc. You might want to try Enterprise. They had no problem having my 22 year old son drive one of their cars. The car was actually rented by our insurance company following his car being totaled, but Enterprise didn’t blink allowing him to take the car and drive it. Rent-A-Wreck might also be worth looking into.
That’s an interesting idea. Not sure how workable it is, but probably worth investigating.
I don’t know what state the OP is in, so I randomly chose New York:
If the son were aware that he was not an authorized driver, he would be in jeopardy. (I’m not claiming that this is a routinely prosecuted offense in such situations.) Car rental contracts specifically spell out who is an authorized driver of the vehicle and do not delegate the authority to the renter to authorize additional drivers.
I suspect that the standard rental companies will not permit. BTW, it is not the collision insurance that becomes invalid (many credit cards cover that automatically and I never get it anyway) but the liability which can be enormous, so I would not go that route. When my son was 22 and interviewing at Microsoft, none of the rental agencies at SEATAC would rent him a car even on MS’s dime. If even MS could not get them to change their policy, I doubt you can.
When you say “I am driving across the country …” do you mean you’re taking a one-way trip or that you’re driving a long way from <here> to <there> then later back to <here> again?
Depending on which situation there are lots of different ways to do this. It’s also the case that even the big rental agencies have different prices and policies for one-way rentals vs. round trip rentals. So if you are going one-way you *must *tell them that up front to get an accurate price quote.
For any round trip rental longer than a few days it’ll be a bunch cheaper to use the oddball small franchise companies like U-Save. Though almost all those places are not going to accept a one-way rental, young driver or no.
There’s also the technique of buying a cheap used car at one end and selling it at the other end. If it’s a round trip you can return it as Alley Dweller suggests or resell it. You tie up some cash during the “rental” timeframe, but your net round trip cost can be real small this way.