I think the issue is largely around having to adjust the mindset to plan in advance.
For the roadtrip scenario, it might be better to just rent a vehicle for a week. For transporting large or heavy items, renting a truck beats owning one.
There are services like Turo, where you know the exact car you're getting, but, sadly, they're far from universally available. And it's pricier, of course.
All rental agencies surely know what fleet they have - typically it's as uniform as possible, to make the maintenance easier. Yet, it's not exactly unusual to see that a particular location has a fleet of entirely different make than they had listed on the website. Or, e.g. I know a place that doesn't have "compact" cars (or have so few of them I've never seen one on the lot), and just automatically "upgrades" everyone to "mid-size" - no clue why, they're a good (aka not scammy or too blatantly overpriced) company otherwise.
My only guess is that no one complains or cares about it.
Obviously, if all you care about is getting from point A to point B somehow then you're probably don't care much.
However, different cars have different characteristics, such as safety ratings (how likely you're to stay alive if you crash is important factor for some people), instrument clusters (my personal pet peeve - most cars have very poor UI/UX), rear window and mirror usefulness (in some you can get a clear view, in some you can barely see if someone's directly behind you or not), and all sorts of "luxuries" such as additional convex mirrors, backup camera or smartphone integration (CarPlay/Android Auto).
All those things - save for safety ratings - are quite subjective, so while some folks may just shrug and wonder how those matter, they make a lot of difference for others. The difference between a car that can drive and a car than you can drive pleasantly (or confidently) is probably significant.
But maybe I've also been spoiled by German car rental places — literally every single car I got here in the past ~5 years has had CarPlay, backup cameras, etc.
And I'd care about all of the above if I were to _buy_ a car, but for a week (or two) long trip, I genuinely can't imagine caring.
(Though, I guess, I am quite opinionated when it comes to picking my computers and phones, etc; and if I had to use a loaner Windows PC for a week I'd probably be mad too. I guess people can have that kind of preferences in cars?)j
I charged the company back via my credit card provider, and have never even considered doing business with that company again.
If gas were much more expensive, it'd be much easier to sell people on EV's, but since there's not a huge difference in operating expenses between an EV and ICE car, why wouldn't people stick with the ICE car to meet 100% of their needs instead of an EV that meets 90% of their needs?
If the USA had a robust charging network for all cars (not just Teslas), then it'd be a different matter but I've regularly encountered broken chargers (shown as operational in the app) as well as long lines for chargers (at 20-30 minutes per car, even a few cars waiting in front of you makes for a long wait).
I thought I'd have traded in our second car (a Hybrid, not a plug-in) for a BEV by now, but have run into enough charging difficulties on long trips to make me hold on to it. Renting an ICE car for long trips isn't really a good option since it's 30 minutes to the nearest car rental place and they have no parking, so it means my wife and I have to drive an hour to pick up the car and bring it back home and may the same trip after we get back from our trip.
I’d love a cheap EV as a second/commuter car but nobody will give me one, and my crappy old Passat still works.
Sure it works if you're doing those trip once ever year or two. But if you do 1 or 2 road trips per year? Or more?
It's much more convenient just to have the vehicle in the first place. Plus you get the benfits of having it all the time.
I walk the dog through a strip mall parking lot every day. There are some U-Haul rental vans that are always there. So pretty clearly, someone is doing daily rentals on a permanent basis. The prices are painted right on the vans: $19.95 / day plus mileage.
Or maybe they just bought the vans from U-Haul and never repainted them? Interesting question. But U-Haul has a box in the strip mall for dropping off your keys, so I suspect they are rentals.
I was thinking of doing a comparison between actually buying or leasing a van vs. paying the daily rental fee. Could there be an economic inefficiency where it's cheaper to rent every day than buy? I'd need to know the year of the van, for one thing.
It's never going to be cheaper to rent daily than to buy. Renting daily has you paying the amortised purchase cost and a little extra for the costs of the rental provider (real-estate, offices, employees), and then a little more for the profit of the rental provider.
If the rental provider charges only what the amortised purchase cost is, they'll be out of business in a few days, if not hours.
The fact is, they are doing it. You're right, there might be some good explanation, but just dismissing the fact is never a good look.
I didn't make any statement about whether or not they are doing it, I pointed out that it costs more to do so. That's the fact in this case: the selling price of a non-loss-leader item can't be lower than the cost of providing it!
That there are people doing it is no indication that it is at all cost-effective to do. They may have some good reason for paying more (poor credit so cannot buy a vehicle, need the "daily" for only 3 months, it's a temporary solution while their own vehicle is being repaired, etc).
The fact is, it costs more to rent daily than to simply buy. The theory you have is that it must be more cost-effective to rent daily than to buy.
Are you seriously claiming that "U-Haul is running a profit" is just a theory?
> I'm the one with an unexplained fact.
The explanation is not going to be "It's cheaper to rent than to buy", if you're looking at periods that ownership generally runs for.
"It's unexplained" does not mean "It's cheaper".
- rentals for the roadtrips cost a lot (about 1.5-2k p/w for a SUV like an X5), and those cars are still poorly equipped. It ruins the fun of a roadtrip if the car audio sucks or the windshield is made of cheapest, thinnest glass. I never knew car companies sell premium vehicles with such low trims. Its a hassle too as the rental companies around where I live examine the car like they were buying it from me. One has to interact with various people and spend the time, and its not always an enjoyable experience, - rentals for hauling stuff are perfectly ok even for weekly use. I'd still love the luxury of owning a toyota proace full time, but there is less of a reason to own sth like this for me.
I believe that when U-Haul (and other rental companies) sell their old vehicles, they remove or paint over the business-related markings first.
It would be some effort to figure out why they're doing it, so I haven't done so.
Wait! I've got it: U-Haul is just parking their rental vans there instead of their own lot. So the vans are actually NOT rented at the moment?
Stay tuned.
Today I saw a sign above the dropbox: "please park your returned trucks <in the lot>"
So I think what's happening is: U-Haul keeps the vans in the strip mall parking lot. (Do they have to pay the mall for that? Who knows?)
Possibly some of the mall tenants rent it occasionally, and this lets them get the van right at their place of business, instead of having to go somewhere and pick it up.
Maybe the keys are always left in the van! I could test that, but I don't want to get in trouble for car theft. Maybe U-Haul doesn't have to worry about someone stealing it, since they could have a locator device in it.