Road Tripping in the USA!

Yellowstone is amazing, you are really missing out. We stayed in West Yellowstone it was a best western I think. It was significantly more than anywhere else but it's cheap to eat there as it's in Montana you only pay 3% tourist tax. Having said that £200 is a lot I think ours was about £100.
 
Capt Doufos said:
Yellowstone is amazing, you are really missing out. We stayed in West Yellowstone it was a best western I think. It was significantly more than anywhere else but it's cheap to eat there as it's in Montana you only pay 3% tourist tax. Having said that £200 is a lot I think ours was about £100.
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You cant see everything in one trip, instead I am visiting Mt St Helens today and have seen many other great things :) I couldn't make it work in this trip.
 
We're starting to plan our trip across the states (West - East) and trying to decide between buying and renting a car. Does anyone have any tips for long term car rental deals? Also any information on the costs of buying/licencing a car in Vancouver/Washington/California? It worked out far cheaper to buy and run our Falcon in Australia over the 3 months that we were travelling ($200 loss on purchase and about $800 maintenance) against renting so I'm thinking that the same should be true for the US but decent cars seem relatively expensive there. Any recommendations for cars under $6k? Will probably end up doing about 12,000 miles and I can take care of most maintenance that doesn't need heavy machinery.
 
If you buy a car, you are going to need a valid address to register it ( get your licence plates ). Don't know how it works in other states but here, you get a 20 day temp plate then it needs registering at the town office where you live.
 
[TW]Fox;24972523 said:
You cant see everything in one trip, instead I am visiting Mt St Helens today and have seen many other great things :) I couldn't make it work in this trip.
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This is true, It's one of the hardest parts of a road trip, deciding what to cut. We spent 5 days total in the Yellowstone and Teton's and still only got around the core sites.

There is never enough time, but it does leave excuses to go back.
 
commited said:
We're starting to plan our trip across the states (West - East) and trying to decide between buying and renting a car. Does anyone have any tips for long term car rental deals? Also any information on the costs of buying/licencing a car in Vancouver/Washington/California? It worked out far cheaper to buy and run our Falcon in Australia over the 3 months that we were travelling ($200 loss on purchase and about $800 maintenance) against renting so I'm thinking that the same should be true for the US but decent cars seem relatively expensive there. Any recommendations for cars under $6k? Will probably end up doing about 12,000 miles and I can take care of most maintenance that doesn't need heavy machinery.
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There are ways you can get one way deals, although they tend to be north/south as people flee Florida when there are hurricanes etc. I have also seen people needing cars moved from coast to coast but I imagine there are tight time frames associated with that sort of thing.

If you hire as a one way you will get given whatever they have that isn't registered in the state you are hiring from and is the same class or higher than you are renting (My experience anyway). Sometimes the one way fees aren't as much as you might think maybe £100-£400 however depending on how long you are renting for will decide if the cost is viable vs. the cost for rest of the trip and as a percentage of the total hire cost.
 
With 12,000 miles and 3 months I'm sure you can work out a nice loop instead. Then you can rent something without getting hammered for one-way charges. Plus you'd never cover the same ground twice even with a loop - with that amount of time I'd be wanting to do something like LA to Vegas to Texas to New Orleans to Florida to Washington DC to New York to Chicago and then back through perhaps down to Colorado then up towards Idaho and Washington then back down the coast to Los Angeles.

All without needing to worry about the car. A quick check brings up prices for 3 months of £1600 total cost for a Fullsize Sedan or £2700 for a Luxury Sedan.

Doing a 3 month road trip is going to cost you an absolute fortune anyway so against that backdrop £1600 for a car seems like a bargain part of the trip.

Something like this, tweak to fit:

http://goo.gl/maps/xmc8N

Even that is only 9k miles!
 
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check out the DMV for the state your going to start in, but its a lot more complicated than just buying a car and driving off. You also need insurance etc, which you will need to register it etc.
 
Thanks for the reply, Fox. A loop makes sense but with coming from Australia and planning to finish up in Europe, going from West - East made sense, especially with the fact that we have family in NY so could leave the car with them until it was sold. Still, if renting this doesn't matter and just need to cost in the flight from LA to NY (£130 ea)
This is what I were thinking of: map
Pretty rough first draft and undoubtedly would include many deviations etc which would bring the mileage up - 12,000 was just to be on the safe side.

Rental makes the most sense, both reliability and ease of trip wise, but the Falcon added something to the trip across Oz that I can't really explain which I think would be missed with a rental car. We were hoping to get an SUV/Wagon to allow us to camp in the back occasionally if required like we did in Oz which would mean a more expensive rental too or paying for a motel every night.

That said, LA appears to be good value as I found a pickup for £1019 and full-size for £1272 from LA. I'd obviously need to buy a LDW policy seperately for <£100, but that's definitely looking like decent value.

Doofski, the licencing costs don't seem as straightforward over there as here.
 
If you're renting, maybe book it was a UK/ROI address if you still have one?
I noticed that CDW/LDW was included when booking on the European sites compared to the US site..
Budget was unbelievably cheap too. Literally half the price of Hertz, and Avis are shockingly expensive, as always!
 
I will never rent a vehicle from Budget again. They were cheap for a reason, awful. Bunch of amatuers.

Alamo on the other hand were excellent.
 
[TW]Fox;25082718 said:
I will never rent a vehicle from Budget again. They were cheap for a reason, awful. Bunch of amatuers.

Alamo on the other hand were excellent.
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I've not had any problems. Care to expand?

I normally go with Hertz, but Budget were really half the price for the same car.

Granted, our Lincoln MkZ had an ant infestation, but we were given a Taurus (wow the US car industry has improved over the last 10 years!!!) replacement without hassle.
 
mjt said:
I've not had any problems. Care to expand?

I normally go with Hertz, but Budget were really half the price for the same car.
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I was Budget Fastbreak, the quick service. It took 25 minutes from desk to leaving because they gave me paperwork with an estimated extra charge on it which nobody could explain even though it was a fully prepaid rental. In the end they said it just needed to be removed at the dropoff point.

Get to dropoff point, meet rude staff asking stupid questions (Is this really a car that belongs to us?). Then have to queue for another 15 minutes to 'hand in paperwork'. No idea why, Alamo just scan and you walk off. Waited 15 minutes. Gave him paperwork, he said thats fine, the charge is nothing to do with him.

Got back to UK. Charge on credit card. Rang customer services who after a week have credited back half of the amount. Customer services is designed to be only open within strict office hours - 9-5 Monday to Friday.

Granted, our Lincoln MkZ had an ant infestation, but we were given a Taurus (wow the US car industry has improved over the last 10 years!!!) replacement without hassle.
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So they downgraded you - an MKZ is an entry level Luxury Sedan, a Taurus is a fullsize Sedan. Did they credit you for the downgrade? I rather suspect not! :p
 
[TW]Fox;25082751 said:
So they downgraded you - an MKZ is an entry level Luxury Sedan, a Taurus is a fullsize Sedan. Did they credit you for the downgrade? I rather suspect not! :p
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To be fair we paid $20/day IIRC to upgrade to the Lincoln from a Maxima so the Taurus was hardly an issue.
The interior is almost identical, but the Taurus didn't have ventilated seats :(
 
The new 2013- MKZ looks nice - I almost took one in Seattle last month but went for the Cadillac ATS instead. Another reason I love Alamo - take any car you want from the lineup in your class.
 
The MkZ was a good car. The 2.0 Ecoboost is surprisingly powerful (240bhp IIRC), but being FWD it's no BMW :p
Taurus seemed slower and heavier but it's actually on a smaller platform. Had a bigger boot too, which was odd.

Went all-out on our last day in Honolulu and got a Lincoln Town Car. My word what a plastic fantastic turd of a barge. The only redeeming feature was the 4.6 V8 that reached 100mph surprisingly quickly!

Got fiipped off on the highway because I tried to push in during rush hour. Must've been the colour :o

F56B6A64-A515-4FF5-B53C-96CD872CD0DE-1820-000002E86DF62697_zps0dde547c.jpg
 
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[TW]Fox;25082776 said:
Another reason I love Alamo - take any car you want from the lineup in your class.
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That is fantastic - is that standard for every rental centre? How does it work, do they just say "pick what you want from that row"? One of my big worries about renting is that I get stuck with some awful piece of junk for the whole trip.
 
Budget were ok when I used them, there were no quibbles and a replacement was sorted out quickly when our minivan developed a 3ft crack across the windscreen on the way to Key West.

I guess it just depends on the office you are dealing with.
 
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