Rental Car for Cross County Trip

[2lhasas]

We will be rafting the Grand Canyon this summer, and since I will no longer be working and 16 yo DS will be out of school, I am thinking of making it into a road trip. That said, after a week in the car and 12 days on a raft, I'm not sure either of us will want to do the drive back, even though at a less leisurely pace we could probably do it in 3 days.

Any tips on rental cars for this sort of thing? We would be going from Atlanta to Las Vegas.

 

[Meadbh]

If you are just going across the county, any vehicle will do!

 

[Ronstar]

We did a one way Seattle to LA trip in a rental. No problems. Except that I booked it through Expedia or something similar and the rental car company would not agree to the price I was quoted online by the third party. Book through the rental car company.

 

[aja8888]

Does it matter what car you drive? What about one you have? Isn't that why we buy them?

We did 12 days recently from Texas to California and back and our Hyundai Santa Fe SUV was perfect with all the gear we had to bring. Trip was 3,800 miles (mostly highway) and we averaged 28 MPG. It seems to me that renting a vehicle for a trip is double paying if you have a car of your own and that car serves the purpose for the trip.

 

[2lhasas]

Still considering it, but for 2 issues. We would have to leave out car unattended in a Las Vegas parking lot for 12 days. The outfitter we are using picks up from Vegas and you end back at Lake Mead.

Then there’s the issue of a teenage boy and his mom. 19 days of togetherness may result in bloodshed. I’m not sure about adding another 3-4 days to that. ��

 

[Winemaker]

I have done several one way car rental trips. Run your trip from both directions, to examine $/mile, dropoff charges, and taxes. For example, fly to Vegas (usually cheap), weekly rate (again cheap) dropoff charges and taxes (vary) leave at Dunwoody. Or rent car in Dunwoody (more expensive), dropoff charges and taxes (vary to high side ,I bet) and fly back to Dunwoody (moderate).

I got burned by taxes and fees last year, going from NM to AZ instead of AZ to NM.

 

[FiveDriver]

I recently did a one-way Rental from Newark NJ back to Charleston. I use a retiree perk from Megacorp, and can compare Avis with Enterprise. In this case, Enterprise was much cheaper (Avis wanted to charge a mileage fee -- ouch !). This was in November, so rental company's are re-positioning the fleet down south. And the demand was for little econo-boxes, so I was able to get a Jeep Cherokee for less than the cheesy Kia Rio.

That Jeep was nice. We were riding around Lake George for a few days, up and down the hills caused the Jeep to work a little harder. But once we hit the Interstate.....the Jeep was just sippin' gas. I drove from South Jersey to Goldsboro NC on a single tank of gas.

One thing to watch out for -- The Rental is taxed by the day, and based on the Starting Point. I was paying Newark Airport Taxes and Franchise Fees for the whole week. If you really want to game the system, take an Uber to an off-site Rental Location to pick up your car.

 

[walkinwood]

Rental prices fluctuate like airline fares. And, they usually don't even take your credit card number. So, book early when you feel the price is right, but then keep checking regularly. If the price drops, rebook & then cancel the original one. I have saved so much doing this in the past.

There is a cool site called autoslash.com that tracks these changes for you & can rebook you automatically. We've used them successfully a few times. Also, Costco & AARP have rental sites that sometimes have great deals

There is a thread somewhere on this forum that discussed getting the best deals on car rentals.

 

[Bamaman]

The drive out I-40 is not particularly interesting.

I suggest flying to Las Vegas and driving to the Grand Canyon from there. Budget carriers Spirit, Southwest and Frontier make that route from Maynard Airport.

Last time we were out there, we went on over to Yosemite, San Francisco and down US Hwy 1, the coast highway south of Carmel.

 

[maxamillion]

You could also rent a camper van to make it a easier road trip. Here in Denver we have Native Campervans, JUCY is another. Turo.com is another resource to check out, and rent someone else’s van. Save on hotels too.

 

[Red Badger]

If you do off airport rental shop, be careful. They regularly have clunkers with 30K (+) miles and those include lots of hard miles.

Winemaker had good tips. Also, book direct.

See if any of your credit cards cover comprehensive insurance. Many do and that can save a ton of money.

Rented cars about 30 weeks per year for a dozen years. Liked National the most.

 

[cbo111]

Check all the rates for one-way rental. We rented at Salt Lake and dropped off at San Francisco. Several of the main agencies wanted around $1400 for 12 days due to dropping off at a different location. But I believe it was Enterprise that only charged about $800, quite a difference.

 

[nwsteve]

If you have Chase Sapphire Ultimate Rewards points, check out their "prices". Got best deal, beating Costco and other providers handily with a point rental.

 

[nphx]

Check rental car fees from southwest.com, start by selecting special offers in the top tab for cars. I like Budget for airport or 1 way. Once you have price on southwest sometimes budget.com with advance pay can shave some dough off.

 

[2lhasas]

Thanks for all the great advice. I hadn't even considered some of these, like tax differences at the rental location. I checked some rates through USAA last night and they weren't as bad as I thought. I'm still mulling whether we should just drive ourselves. One advantage would be that 16 could help with the drive, whereas he won't be allowed to drive a rental car.

As someone pointed out, I-40 has a whole lot of nothing on it, so we could probably crank out the miles going out - although still 2200 miles. Afterwards we could take our time coming back - thinking about cutting up through Zion NP and ending up on 70 through St. Louis, then cutting South through Nashville and Chattanooga.

Cheers