Road Tripping in the USA!

[TW]Fox · 2 May 2016 at 22:29

Not sure I get the point of doing that :confused:

Tomsk · 2 May 2016 at 22:32

[TW]Fox;29451402 said:
Not sure I get the point of doing that

Sometimes hotels require the registration for parking.
Usually I just show them the key ring, but that's no good if the registration is not legible,.

Redgie · 6 May 2016 at 14:53

Can anyone please check my rental car logic here

?

I need 2 rentals, 1 from LA-SF, 1 from SF-LV (with a few days gap in between), both for myself and my girlfriend (who are both under 25 and thus attract the young driver surcharges).

My understanding is that we won't need to pay an additional driver fee as both rentals originate in the state of California, but that we will more than likely have to pay a young driver surcharge for each of us per day (which is fine).

It does not work out cheaper to just do a rental LA-LV, as SF parking is ridiculous and we're there for a few days where the car would just sit there parked.

Using www.uscarhire.co.uk (who seem to be well recommended on here) I've found that driving the car from LA-LV would be perfectly fine, but driving it SF-LV incurs a $300 drop off fee (any idea why?). So to save costs, I'm planning on booking the LA-SF rental with www.uscarhire.co.uk and the SF-LV rental direct with Dollar (who don't have a one-way drop off fee for this route).

Thus I'll get 1 all inclusive rental using www.uscarhire.co.uk and 1 rental where I'll need to pay a young driver surcharge (potentially x 2) direct with Dollar.

Does this sound right? Thanks in advance

!

OllyM · 6 May 2016 at 15:45

I'm surprised at the one way fee, from the uscarhire FAQ:

Some 1-way rentals do not have a charge as shown below:

Collecting and dropping within Florida
Collecting and dropping within California
With Dollar and Alamo only, there is usually no 1-way rental charge for cars collected and dropped off at any location between California, Arizona and Nevada, so for example you can collect a car in Los Angeles, CA and return the car to Phoenix, AZ with no 1-way rental charge.

Perhaps the drop fee is showing up by mistake?

Also I'd recommend Alamo over Dollar.

acemastr · 6 May 2016 at 16:02

gazo7000 said:
Hi All,

I'm going Florida soon and I know I will be using a few tolls. Alamo said they use a pay by plate and charge at the end of the rental to my credit card. Has anyone used this before or have any suggestions? I was told not to use it and pay cash as it would be cheaper?

Buy a sunpass in pretty much any store, slap it on the windscreen. Anyone that lives here uses one (me included).

acemastr · 6 May 2016 at 16:04

[TW]Fox;29402982 said:
Yea, there is a convenience fee which makes it more expensive than just chucking cash in the bucket at the toll.

Some of the Florida tolls are ridiculous - less than a dollar a time.

You'll find most tolls don't even have a bucket/person anymore, all seem to be changing to toll-by-plate, the 26c (yes, $0.26) one next to my house uses it and charges $2.25 administration fee.

Sunpass.

OllyM · 6 May 2016 at 16:13

You need to buy a portable Sunpass for a rental car though which is $20 - it might be cheaper and easier to just pay the rental company's convenience fee unless you visit Florida a lot.

On another note I wish they'd hurry up and make Sunpass interoperable with E-ZPass :rolleyes:

Redgie · 6 May 2016 at 16:25

OllyM said:
I'm surprised at the one way fee, from the uscarhire FAQ:

Perhaps the drop fee is showing up by mistake?

Also I'd recommend Alamo over Dollar.

Yeah I'd definitely prefer Alamo, but the $300 fee makes it out of the question (though we'll probably use them for the LA-SF leg). Don't think it's a mistake as it shows up on every possible rental for SF-LV, but none at all from LA-LV. I guess maybe they're just more willing to have vehicles flow from the more popular LA-LV route than the less popular SF-LV one?

OllyM · 6 May 2016 at 16:34

Perhaps, every time I've flown into SFO the rental lot has been pretty barren, but LAX is usually overflowing with cars.

Personally I'd just do one rental from LAX and deal with the cost of parking - you could always dump the car on the outskirts and get the BART in?

Peerzy · 6 May 2016 at 16:38

I stayed just outside San Fran and drove in for our 3 days of stay and we found parking fine. There was a few places that did $10 or $15 for the entire day that were about 15-20 minutes walk from Fishermans Wharf.

Obviously if you try to use a big multistory right next to everything expect to pay $10ph but we found it easy to have a car in San Fran.

I'll second the suggestion to just do 1 rental from LAX to LV.

Redgie · 6 May 2016 at 16:40

Well it's more that the combined cost of parking and renting the car for days we definitely won't need it just seem like a waste. I've done the math and we come out a couple hundred dollars better off by just having two separate rentals

It's not off the table though, just depends what else I can find between now and booking...

Going to send uscarhire a message regarding the one way fees in case it is indeed just a mistake.

semi-pro waster · 6 May 2016 at 18:54

Redgie said:
Using www.uscarhire.co.uk (who seem to be well recommended on here) I've found that driving the car from LA-LV would be perfectly fine, but driving it SF-LV incurs a $300 drop off fee (any idea why?). So to save costs, I'm planning on booking the LA-SF rental with www.uscarhire.co.uk and the SF-LV rental direct with Dollar (who don't have a one-way drop off fee for this route).

When you say you will go direct with Dollar - have you checked to ensure that you will still have the necessary insurance cover? It might well do but it's definitely something to be conscious of so that you are comparing like for like.

Redgie · 6 May 2016 at 19:48

semi-pro waster said:
When you say you will go direct with Dollar - have you checked to ensure that you will still have the necessary insurance cover? It might well do but it's definitely something to be conscious of so that you are comparing like for like.

So far as I'm aware they're all comparable once I factor in my excess reduction policy (though obviously most if not all don't need it) , but I'll check, thanks for the tip

!

[TW]Fox · 6 May 2016 at 20:38

I can't imagine a question where the right answer is Dollar.

The Mad Rapper · 6 May 2016 at 22:02

We are going to the US in August. I'd like to rent a Ford F150 for the period we are there. Is that possible? If so, is there any particular company we should use? What will be required in addition to the fee and my driving licence?

OllyM · 6 May 2016 at 22:03

Why would you want to rent a pickup truck when you're on vacation? :confused:

The Mad Rapper · 6 May 2016 at 22:07

OllyM said:
Why would you want to rent a pickup truck when you're on vacation?

Because I like them and want to drive one. Is that a good enough reason?

acemastr · 6 May 2016 at 22:57

The Mad Rapper said:
Because I like them and want to drive one. Is that a good enough reason?

It drives like an SUV, just rent an SUV and have more room for your bags that won't get them wet.

semi-pro waster · 7 May 2016 at 07:14

The Mad Rapper said:
We are going to the US in August. I'd like to rent a Ford F150 for the period we are there. Is that possible? If so, is there any particular company we should use? What will be required in addition to the fee and my driving licence?

From a very quick search Avis seem to offer the F-150 or equivalent through their speciality options so it certainly seems to be possible. Enterprise also seem to let you hire pick-ups but don't mention the F-150, their large pickup option is a Dodge Ram 1500 so there probably are other choices but I have no idea if these two are the best for this type of thing or if you should go for another company.

Joe T · 7 May 2016 at 10:04

Pick-ups arent that easy to come by. For the tourist market it's rare and often very expensive. Enterprise do them but they dont usually come with the correct insurances etc.

I looked into this, and ended up with a Tahoe or similar. I would recommend doing the same. Remember they're the same as the pick-ups underneath.