Own a beater & just rent cars for travel?

[chinaco]

Car rental is a reasonable approach for a short road trip 1 or 2 weeks. For an extended trip of say... 2 months, it probably be a bit expensive. Especially if you consider... If you have a beater... you are probably not carrying the type of insurance that covers damage if you have a wreck. The rental agency's collision and damage waiver is very high and adds to the cost.

We often rent cars when we do a fly/drive vacation. We tend to keep one of our vehicles in reliable shape for road trips... Therefore we usually drive our own vehicle.

 

[Cb]

When I look at Edmund's figures on depreciation/maintenance/repair as a function of age of the car, I find that my 2003 Saturn VUE costs me about $40 per week and my 1995 Dodge RAM costs me about $50 per week. If my trip doesn't involve a need for high clearance, I drive the Saturn VUE which gets ~26 mpg on the highway. So I don't see gas costs making it financially worthwhile.

True...but I'm talking about renting fot exceptionally high-mileage weeks, and the side benefit of knowing we're not going to be parked in Stinking Creek, Tennessee for a few days waiting for Cletus to fix our car if it breaks down.

Cb
PS: My apologies to any members from Stinking Creek named Cletus whom I might have offended.

 

[TromboneAl]

Let's quantify Sue Js trip (1400 miles, one week):

Personal car (use IRS mileage rate):

.485 $/mile * 1400 miles = $679


Rent Camry from SFO, Apr 18 - Apr 25:

$237 Car Rental
Camry gets 28 MPG, and assume $3/gallon gas:
1400 miles / 28 MPG * 3 $/g = $150


Total Drive Your Own Car Cost: $679
Total Rental Cost: $387

--------------------------

Well, that surprised me. Were my assumptions reasonable? The IRS mileage rate is in agreement with AAA's rate.

 

[TromboneAl]

Given the above assumptions, how many miles (x) do you have to drive to break even (34 is the daily rental rate, .107 is the cost of gas per mile):

.485 x = 34 + .107 x
.378 x = 34
x = 89.9 miles

 

[TromboneAl]

Qualifying note: About 40% of the cost per mile calculation at Edmunds.com for driving your own car comes from insurance, taxes and fees, and financing, all of which you would continue to pay while you rent the car.

 

[Cb]

I suspect that most of us drive for less $ per mile than national averages...I know I do - often buying used cars, or relatively inexpensive new cars with very few options, keeping them for a decade, etc.

The surprisingly low cost of unlimited mileage rentals makes me a bit more inclined to keep cars even longer than I have in the past.

Cb

 

[sgeeeee]

Qualifying note: About 40% of the cost per mile calculation at Edmunds.com for driving your own car comes from insurance, taxes and fees, and financing, all of which you would continue to pay while you rent the car.

Yeah. That's the point I was going to make. You don't stop paying depreciation, insurance, taxes and fees on your car just because you keep it in the garage.

 

[free4now]

Yep, most of the cost of owning a car is fixed... insurance and purchase cost. Even when I went on my round the world trip for 7 months, I still had to pay the same insurance on my car sitting at home as I would pay before and after. The insurance company has no way to verify that I won't let someone else drive the car.

Mileage doesn't affect final value much. I experimented on edmunds.com and it looks like on a 10 year old Camry, having an additional 10k miles only reduces the used value about $100. So a 1400 mile drive reduces the value of the car $14. Hardly even worth considering when contemplating a $400 rental.

The only significant marginal cost you pay for not leaving the beater at home is maintenance. Unless there is some huge nascent mechanical problem that you're hoping to sliently hand off to the next owner of the car, there's no way that maintenance will on average cost more than a rental. Or unless your beater is a Ferrari with expensive parts.

In my mind the real reason for renting a car for long trips is comfort: peace of mind that you're less likely to break down and the comfort of driving a more pleasant vehicle.

 

[eridanus]

Qualifying note: About 40% of the cost per mile calculation at Edmunds.com for driving your own car comes from insurance, taxes and fees, and financing, all of which you would continue to pay while you rent the car.

You could use the IRS "volunteer" rate. It's $.14/mile. The moving/medical rate is $.18/mile.

 

[rw86347]

Mileage doesn't affect final value much. I experimented on edmunds.com and it looks like on a 10 year old Camry, having an additional 10k miles only reduces the used value about $100. So a 1400 mile drive reduces the value of the car $14. Hardly even worth considering when contemplating a $400 rental.

My experieance with cars (mostly Toyota's) is that they are good for at least 200,000 miles. While I have found most people think of old cars as simply old and uncool. So I look for low miliage(30k-70k) older cars, and drive them for 200k miles. This strategy seems to cut the cost of a car to 1/8th of my friends.

 

[Cb]

I was mistaken about the rental cost. My wife rented a Pontiac G6, drove it 1400 miles in 6 days, and paid a total of $149 for the rental, or $.11 per mile.

I'm not sure how she'll react when I tell her about my plan to replace our current cars with a couple of '87 Dodge Omni's (well down the depreciation curve, I figure) and just rent whenever we have to go outside the beltway.

Cb

 

[TromboneAl]

I redid my personal car cost/mile calculation, and estimated it costs me 20 cents/mile. So, redoing my calculation from the previous page:

Personal car (My rate (Toyota Echo)):

.2 $/mile * 1400 miles = $280

Rent Camry from SFO, Apr 18 - Apr 25:

$237 Car Rental
Camry gets 28 MPG, and assume $3/gallon gas:
1400 miles / 28 MPG * 3 $/g = $150


Total Drive Your Own Car Cost: $280
Total Rental Cost: $387

And the breakeven miles calc:

.2 x = 34 + .107 x
.093x = 34
x = 366 miles/day

 

[Gearhead Jim]

A dissenting voice here...
We bought a car that we enjoy driving around town and on long trips, so we consider the extra cost to be part of the "travel experience." We could also take either the beater 1998 Camry, or the nice 2005 Camry, but they're less enjoyable.
On the other hand, tire costs alone for the fun car are about 8 cents per mile. I haven't worked that out yet for our SWR.

 

[TromboneAl]

If tires cost 8 cents per mile, and last 50,000 miles, that means a set of tires costs $4,000. You must have a monster truck.

 

[Gearhead Jim]

If tires cost 8 cents per mile, and last 50,000 miles, that means a set of tires costs $4,000.  You must have a monster truck.

Set of tires from Tire Rack (discount store), mounted & balanced locally, cost $1,600.  Tire life is about 20,000 miles or a little less, hence the 8 cents per mile.    But they stick like Velcro.
Corvette with optional handling package, runflat tires.
As mentioned, it's all part of the "travel experience", although sometimes the scenery is a blur. 
We do have to make some other financial adjustments to cover this extravagance.  This is probably one of those expenses that will decline drastically when we grow up, oops, I mean get older.

 

[leyland]

We do it all the time. We can rent from Enterprise for $20/day on weekends and the rental car gets better gas mileage then the car we would have used. For example, on a 800 mile round trip we will save $20 in gas by renting and spend $60 for the rental therefore netting out to costing only $40 to rent instead of drive out own car. If you figure 30cent/mile to drive our own car (excluding gas which I already accounted for) then it really makes sense.

Last month I made a ~2500 road trip to Austin in our 2000 Camry to get a head start on spring and meet up with some guitar buddies.

While driving with the windows down & Joe Ely Live at Libery Lunch in the CD player I did what any of you would do...mental arithmetic on the economics of using up ~2.5% of the miles we'll get out of a car we bought for $8500 and will dump for ~$500 after putting ~100K on it...

It seemed to me like I might be able to rent a new car with no mileage limit for less than the ~$200 I 'used up' on my trip.

Well, Friday I torqued my knee and wasn't able to replace the front brake pads on the Camry, so my wife rented a car for a ~1000 mile trip yesterday. $170 for the week...

Do any of you folks rent cars for long driving trips?

Cb

 

[Dawg52]

Set of tires from Tire Rack (discount store), mounted & balanced locally, cost $1,600. Tire life is about 20,000 miles or a little less, hence the 8 cents per mile. But they stick like Velcro.
Corvette with optional handling package, runflat tires.
As mentioned, it's all part of the "travel experience", although sometimes the scenery is a blur.
We do have to make some other financial adjustments to cover this extravagance. This is probably one of those expenses that will decline drastically when we grow up, oops, I mean get older.

Lord have mercy! $1,600 for a set of tires. A buddy of mine just bought a Corvette, I will have to tell him what to look forward to on a replacement set.

 

[Sam]

Set of tires from Tire Rack (discount store), mounted & balanced locally, cost $1,600. Tire life is about 20,000 miles or a little less, hence the 8 cents per mile. But they stick like Velcro.

I tried extreme performance tires once in 97. $800 for 4 tires. They lasted less than 20Kmiles. I tried really hard to feel the difference between these and the regular ones ($480/set, 40Kmiles), but could not find anything tangible.

 

[youbet]

We've taken several vacations in rental cars. Our fleet, at that time, consisted of older, high milage cars and I was able to find great rental deals by picking up the rental at the nearby airport. It made sense.

Haven't been doing it lately since we have a good vehicle for traveling and many of our trips tend to be more spontaneous since RE. It's hard and/or inconvenient to find those great rental deals when you, at the last minute, decide to leave a day earlier or extend your one week trip by a couple days because you're having a good time and aren't ready to come home yet.

 

[FinanceDude]

We've taken several vacations in rental cars. Our fleet, at that time, consisted of older, high milage cars and I was able to find great rental deals by picking up the rental at the nearby airport. It made sense.

Haven't been doing it lately since we have a good vehicle for traveling and many of our trips tend to be more spontaneous since RE. It's hard and/or inconvenient to find those great rental deals when you, at the last minute, decide to leave a day earlier or extend your one week trip by a couple days because you're having a good time and aren't ready to come home yet.

Excellent point....... I suppose a lot of folks got down to one car when they FIRE, so decisions need to be made. Right or wrong, I believe having ONE reliable car is a must in my life.

I have been burned before........