I am looking to rent a car in Atlanta and drop it off in Dallas - roughly mid Oct to early Nov for 3 weeks. Budget wants $3000 (!!) while Alamo wants $1200.
Are they any better options - companies that specialize in one-way?
U-Haul. Not as stylish, but should be cheaper.
Try Enterprise – they advertise as specializing in one-way rentals.
Actually, National semi-specializes in one-way. When I had to do a one-way (Charlottesville, VA to Ann Arbor MI) they were miles cheaper than the other companies. I got a quick quote for $640 for a compact (I assumed you’d keep the car for 3 days and drop it off at airports on either side)
On further reflection, I think a large portion of the cost arises from keeping the car for 21 days. I don’t think $50/day is all that uncommon for in-town rental, that’s $1,000 right there.
Try the larger ones, like Avis.
Alamo’s price sounds reasonable on its face but you haven’t said what kind of car it is.
I always rent with Avis and their one way rates are very reasonable.
Where you get jacked up is their preposterous insurance rates. Call your own insurance company and ask if you’re insured for use of rentals. If you’re not, it could actually be cheaper to have that added to your policy than to buy the rental company’s insurance, which is insanely high.
Not quite. If you get the cheapest U-Haul at $25/day, that’s $525. Add on top of that the 99 cents per mile charge @ 781 miles, and the total comes out to $1306 before any taxes. And then there’s the fuel “economy” of a U-Haul vehicle to consider. That Alamo price quoted in the OP doesn’t sound too terrible in comparison.
You can also try using insurance through American Express if you have a card . It’s a flat $20 fee for the insurance over the entire course of your rental (up to 30 days).
Not sure about U-Haul, but Budget doesn’t charge mileage for one-way rentals. You pay a little more per day, but you get unlimited mileage.
I recently helped a friend move to Long Island, NY and the Budget rental for 4 days with unlimited mileage was around $300, including a car trailer. I think the truck rental alone would’ve been a little over $200.
Actually, they don’t, especially for interstate trips. Enterprise operates as discrete companies in each state, and the cars are owned by the state-level entity. If you look at their rental agreements, you are generally prohibited from taking the vehicle outside the state it’s rented from without prior notification to Enterprise – locations near state borders (Memphis, for example, and locations in the northeast) often have stated exceptions provided for in the agreements. Enterprise has no mechanisms in place to get the cars back to where they belong if they’re dropped off outside their home area.
There’s generally no problem if you’re renting and returning in the same metro area, even if your plans involve out-of-state travel, but you are expected to let them know – we’ve rented minivans from Enterprise several times for family trips to Florida from Atlanta, but we returned to the pickup location and notified them in advance we’d be taking the vehicle out of state.
We had to contend with this when my family and I found ourselves several hundred miles from home after 9/11. My wife had rented a car from Enterprise in Kansas City, and once all the flights were grounded, rental cars became scarce from everyone. We needed to get back to Atlanta, and it took us several persistent calls to Enterprise to convince them to make an exception because of the circumstances and allow us to drop off the car in Atlanta.
Understand that I’m not criticizing Enterprise for their policies – we regularly rent from them for personal needs because their pricing is excellent and their customer service is usually superlative (I’m a Hertz guy for business travel) – but they’re definitely not in the one-way interstate rental business.
For one-way interstate rentals, Hertz, Avis, and National tend to be the best bets. Even then, it varies – Hertz corporate locations will generally allow one-way rentals (with a dropoff fee if it’s outside the same metro area) because the cars are owned at the corporate level, but Hertz Local Edition locations (essentially locally owned franchise locations) usually don’t because the cars are owned by the local franchise.
On further reflection, I think a large portion of the cost arises from keeping the car for 21 days. I don’t think $50/day is all that uncommon for in-town rental, that’s $1,000 right there.
You could always buy some crappy beater and just abandon it in Dallas.
At 10:44 AM
At 8:57 PM
Best delayed double-post username combination ever.
Hehe. Yeah, that was odd.
Cool, I just got an American Express card! That’s good to know!
Maybe you can hire yourself out to a car transport company. Every year my dad hired someone to drive his car from VT to FL, then back again six months later. I don’t think you could use the car for 3 weeks, but once you get there you could rent one locally.
I did a one-way rental with Hertz from Burlington, VT to Manchester NH last year. It was about $60 for the day, but we only needed the car for the one day to get from our friend’s place in Burlington to the airport in Manchester.
Are you planning on taking three weeks to get from Atlanta to Dallas? If not, you are paying the one-way rate for a lot of extra time. Rent a car form Atlanta to Dallas, and then rent a new car in Dallas for the three weeks.