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I hope I'm posting in the right place. We are two forum lurkers that are planning a trip to the USA later this year. Flights are booked and we'll land in San Fransisco on august 31th, and leave from New York the 26. of september. We are planning to drive the whole way. It started out as a plan to do the Route 66, but has evolved quite a bit of other things, but we are still unsure about a lot of things. But our biggest problem at the time is to find a good rental car. We don't want to overspend, but we still don't want any lovely small cars. From San Fransisco to Yosemite and back to SF and follow Highway 1 down the coast to LA would be cool to do in a Camaro or any other fun car, then maybe exchange it to a more sensible smaller SUV to do the rest of the trip. We have tried most websites and to get sensible quotes seems to be hard. If we find something we like, suddenly there are tons of extra charges later in the booking process, or they are ridiculously expensive. But most of the time they all have just lovely cars to offer and all other is "already booked". I can't believe that they are booked five months ahead. Another thing is that we can pick up the car anywhere in SF, but to see what is available we have to check every office of every agency. This kills me. Any tips to good rental agencies that actually can help? (A rental agency goon would get free love forever) I might make a post later on with questions about things to do on the actual trip 
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Apr 7, 2015 09:22
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 08:15 |
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You might get lucky with Auto Driveaway. Years ago, I delivered a Mercedes convertible from Miami to Montreal, complete with stipend for gas. Otherwise, bear in mind that you'll pay a premium for a) one-way rental (dropping off the vehicle at a location different from the pick-up location), and b) a muscle car or SUV. You can find really cheap compact rentals (<$20/day) on hotwire.com and other sites like that, but you have to return it to the same place. To pick up in California and drop off in New York, you'll likely have to pay several hundred dollars just for the one-way rental fee.
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Apr 7, 2015 17:47
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National rent a car is probably my favorite- unlimited miles and they usually have good deals, but it does take a little bit of messing around with codes on their website. Occassionally they do have one-way rates that are ok. The rental companies want to shift inventory to more popular places for the correct seasons, so it may be possible to get a decent rate if you have good timing/are lucky. Avoid renting from airports, if possible in cities. First, there's often an airport surcharge which can be $50+. Second, hotels in cities often have a charge for parking, and both SF and NYC have excellent transportation options to/from the airport. The downside is that other locations may have a more limited selection. I highly suggest ditching the car as soon as you get to NYC- I once had a FIVE HOUR traffic jam going from Manhattan to JFK (16 miles). And that was after spending $80 to park overnight.
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Apr 7, 2015 21:13
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Yeah, won't even try to drive in NYC. We'll deliver the car at Newark and commute into town Thanks for your replies
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Apr 8, 2015 07:38
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I drove New Orleans > Chicago a few years ago in a one way rental and the 'one-way' fee actually ended up being almost as much as the rental (about $300). That was with Hertz for a large SUV though, so you might get luckier with a smaller car. For what its worth - you may want to re-consider the SF > LA part of the trip if you still can. We had 16 days in the U.S. but did our drive over 10 days because of time spent in New Orleans at the start and Chicago at the end. It felt like it had quite a lot of driving in it, with 4 days of 5 hours driving in the car. Didn't leave much time to actually stop and enjoy the places along the way. A quick check on Google Maps is telling me SF > NYC is 43 hours of driving. Thats 9 days of 6 hours a day of driving (presuming you lose an hour a day to stopping for lunch and/or hit any traffic) - quite a lot in 25 days (minus whatever days you spend in SF & NYC). Thats also presuming you don't deviate from the most efficient route at all to see any sights. Adding on the SF > LA trip at the start will mean bumping this total up to 49 hours, plus add an extra stop... (sorry if thats slightly off the rental question - I just had friends who did East Coast to West Coast and really underestimated the sheer amount of driving involved, they ended up really regretting not having enough time to actually enjoy anywhere along the route properly)
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Apr 9, 2015 00:58
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I book travel for the company I work for. I pulled up your rental on our travel planning site, the cheapest rate I found was with Advantage and was ~$2,200. (Their one-way drop off fee is only $750, as opposed to all the companies that are charging twice that for the one-way.) Keep in mind you'll also need to budget another $1,000 for gas. I would also recommend not driving across the country. Not because you can only drive six hours in a day and it'll take forever, but because giant swaths of the country between San Francisco and New York have absolutely nothing in them. I live on Route 66. I've driven from Chicago to Amarillo, TX, which is a pretty good chunk of your trip. There are some neat things, but nothing so incredible that I'd give up several days in New York or Vegas or California. If you do decide to drive it, you should plan on trying to do some long driving days. If you take turns, you can easily do 10-12 hours a day. Skip most of Oklahoma at the very least. Don't be sidetracked by the Ozarks, they're overrated. And try not to fall asleep in Illinois. (But seriously, drive around the west coast and get the road trip experience and then fly to the east.) If you decide to do it anyway and want some info about stuff between Tulsa and Chicago, I can give tips. There's a very large rocking chair in Missouri that you absolutely don't want to miss. 
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Apr 21, 2015 05:08
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Glass of Milk posted:National rent a car is probably my favorite- unlimited miles and they usually have good deals, but it does take a little bit of messing around with codes on their website. Quoting this because National is great for renting cars. Also, if you do rent somewhere in the city and don't like the choices they have for cars, you can just take that car to an airport and swap it out for something different. Usually you have to stay in the same class of car, but sometimes due to availability or promotions, you can get something better. I've done that a few times at PHX because the airport surcharges are so stupidly priced.
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Apr 25, 2015 16:14
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 08:15 |
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I found this thread while searching for information on rental cars. I'm wanting to plan a road trip through the west coast of the U.S. and would like to fly open jaw between SLC and ABQ rather than spending an extra eight hours looping back around to SLC to return the vehicle. From what I'm gathering in this thread and online, there's going to be a premium on one-way rentals. However, I found the following advice: - Hotwire may have deals on one-way rentals, as well as credit card companies - Try splitting your itinerary into multiple pieces and see if that's cheaper. For example, you want to go between City A and C, compare the price of picking up the vehicle at City A, dropping it off at City B (which should be a city close-ish to City A), renting a new car in City B, and then dropping off the new vehicle at City C. If you were planning on hanging out somewhere for a couple of days, you can drop off your original vehicle at City C, then rent a second vehicle in City C for a day or so--apparently some bloggers have found this to be cheaper than just renting a vehicle in City A and dropping it off in City C at the end of your trip. - If anyone in your group has a good driving record, google "Driveaways," where people will let you drive their car and drop it off along a specific route. Might not work for everyone's plans.
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May 20, 2015 02:29
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