One way car rental US to Canada

[SecretlyFI]

I am doing some early research on visiting Glacier National Park and Banff, flying into Bozeman and out of Calgary. I tried doing a mock booking on several rental car sites and they all came up 'no cars available'. To check the real availability I did mock bookings with pick up and drop off in the same location and they had plenty of availability, so it must be some cross-border restriction.

I googled if it is allowed to rent in US and drop off in Canada and the answer on those same rental car company sites was yes. Anyone have any experience with doing this and how you go about reserving it? I'm aware I need to confirm insurance coverage and that would be my next step once I find out if I can actually do the rental.

 

[braumeister]

My guess is that it's a matter of logistics management. There should be plenty of cross-border traffic between, for example, Seattle and Vancouver, so it would be easy for them to approve such a rental. But your route would likely be very seldom done, so it's not worth their trouble.

I suspect that if you were to make the reservation by phone, talking with a good representative, you could make this happen, but there would likely be a hefty charge for it.

 

[Koogie]

I have done it but would concur with the previous poster. They might just discourage it because of economics.

I used Hertz and rented a one way from NYC to Toronto some years ago.
Dropped it off no problem. No issues at the border.

 

[cathy63]

I believe part of the issue is that a rental car with US plates won't be very useful in Canada. Since it's been brought into the country without the company having paid any import tax or license I don't think they can rent it out to Canadian drivers. They either need a US driver who's going one-way back to the states, or they will have to pay someone to take it across (or I suppose they can pay the fees and make it a Canadian car). Whatever they end up doing, they will find a way to make you pay for it.