OT: Rental Car Prices ?

Haven’t tried to rent a car, but I’ve noticed similar with Airbnb’s.

I've been planning some travel, and I've run into this. Travel websites say that during the pandemic, lots of rental car companies only stayed in business by selling off their fleets for revenue. Now the pandemic is ending, and they have no cars at the very moment when demand is up. Low supply, high demand, higher prices.

I rent cars almost every week and in a rental in Tampa right now. The selection was slim when I arrived on Friday and got stuck with a mustang or SUV. I chose the mustang but don't like the rental versions of mustangs or camaros. I do like the Dodge RT rentals.

I'm immune from price fluctuations because of company rates. It's a perk I use for personal rentals as well.

I've noticed Uber and Lyft rides going up.

Perhaps these hard-hit travel companies also wanna make up for lots of lost-revenue and with the vaccine rollout and lockdowns being lifted there is likely gonna be high-demand at least thru the end of the summer if not longer

It’s supply following demand. When COVID hit and everybody stopped traveling, rental car companies weren’t renting to anyone. So they sold off their cars and didn’t restock. Now that vaccines are getting distributed, people are starting to travel again, but the car rentals haven’t restocked yet. Plus auto manufactures are having problems getting their production lines ramped up again. Reminds me a little bit about toilet paper and hand sanitizer from a year ago

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/25/business/…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegley…

I don't travel for business - my few travels/trips are all personal-trips and I have flexibility of when I can travel - when I do a SC-trip I try to minimize my out-of-club expenses so I can maximize my in-club expenses (priorities people) - thus I usually try to rent at off-airport/neighborhood locations since prices can often be half - when I was looking at prices a little while ago i just looked at the neighborhood locations since that is where I usually rent and that is where I noticed the 2x-increase - perhaps the airport-locations have not increased as much since rental-companies usually have the bulk of their cars at the airport - could be the neighborhood locations are the ones that have gotten hit the hardest w/ lack of cars since they give priority to the airport locations (airport locations usually have way more cars and often the newest cars).

I’ve noticed some hotel prices rising too.

All the rental companies trimmed their fleets 25 to 40 % due to lack of travelers due to COVID. They also canceled future lease agreements they had. There are now a lot less cars to rent and places are running out of cars now. Hotel prices are up and so are flights. With travel picking up its going to take a while for things to get back to pre covid

papi... i’m guessin your jalopy is a Nissan product. Nissans with a CVT seem to benefit with a auxiliary transmission cooler installed. it increases the oil capacity and cools it more.

The traditional car rental business is suffering and will likely need to change their revenue model to survive in the long-run. For shorter term rentals, perhaps look at car sharing solutions such as Zipcar or Turo.

Rental rates are definitely up, but I recently found a decent deal on priceline for my upcoming trip to Dallas. They offered an Express deal for $45/day on the car I wanted, which was $25 per day less than the quoted rates, indicating that it would come from one of three brand name companies. I took the deal and got a car with Hertz.

You may want to wait it out a week or so. Miami is a school break travel destination and we are in the midst of April school vacation for some of the northern states.

Or maybe it's time for a new car? I like you tend to buy them new and then milk them for as many good years as I can get, but when a car is so bad that you don't trust it for a 2 hour trip, then it's time to consider a change.

I was in St Louis a week ago. I didn't think the prices were any higher.

Also, didn't Hertz go bankrupt?

Papi. I rented a car in Naples, Fl for a week in late March and got a great deal. I did reserve it over a month in advance. However, I agree with all the comments here. The travel business has been particularly hard hit and is evaluating and changing pricing constantly to mostly survive.

My son is going away with 6 total guys to an island. 4 made their reservations one day and got a very attractive air fare. The other two waited one day and the airfare had tripled.

Anyone looked at hotel rates in the Keys recently? I realize they’re all trying to make up for a year of lost revenue, but I’ve never had to pay this much for one night that didn’t at least include a BJ.

Uber notes - just talked to a buddy who went to Vegas (works related) and he couldn’t even find an Uber or Lyft when he arrived on Friday evening at the airport. Are all these people grabbing unemployment and not doing their “gig” jobs or are the fares usually that sparse that drivers gave up and are working less?

Worse Uber drivers ever = Las Vegas.

^ I was watching a YouTube video where this guy said he was in Tucson and the city was dead and he had to wait 45- minutes for an Uber where in the past it was 5 or 10 minutes tops.

There are millions on unemployment yet there are millions of jobs unfilled - businesses can't compete against the government

Hertz filed for bkrptcy, but they also own Thrifty who went with them. Just rented a car for 5 days for next month's trip to South florida. At least $125 more than I expected it would be. That is of course made up by round trip non-stop Boston to Miami on American for $79.80 ...total.

I rent cars pretty frequently and I’ve definitely noticed the price increase recently. I normally use enterprise and book well in advance of potential trips. This has saved me a lot of $ on my last few rentals as current rates are 3x what I made my reservation at.

I used to rent Enterprise bc they typically had the cheapest prices, including weekend rates for as little as $10/day - but I guess they became too popular to where I started to consistently have issues getting a car (at least in Miami and ATL) and I stopped using them

^ this was in non-airport neighborhood locations

“… Or maybe it's time for a new car? I like you tend to buy them new and then milk them for as many good years as I can get, but when a car is so bad that you don't trust it for a 2 hour trip, then it's time to consider a change. …”

Yeah – once a car starts giving me issues I get into something else vs putting too-much $$$ into repairs – the car I have now is 6 ys/o which is not that old “for me”, but it only has about 70k-miles and hasn’t given me any issues other than the CVT acting-up every-now-and-then but it’s not something constant; and I don’t usually drive long-distances so it hasn’t been an issue – I may take a road-trip maybe 1x or 2x a year (some years none) and I figured I would just rent a car for now for those infrequent road-trips.

So I’ll probably stick w/ the jalopy for now until it does start leaving me on the side of the road which it never has – I def like not having a car-payment to deal with – right now the only reason I’d get into a new car would be to have something nicer ($40 to $50k range); getting into an affordable new car doesn’t feel like money-well-spent to me if I'm just getting into it for it being new and affordable vs something I like; for that I just stay w/ what I have – cars have gotten very expensive and add to that the very-high insurance-rates in Miami and owning a new/nice car gets pretty-pricey (I currently don’t have collision-insurance on my jalopy which brings down my insurance rates, but when I moved backhome from Dallas to Miami, my full-coverage at the time doubled) – and a decent used-car now-a-days is costly AF (if you can find one that doesn’t have a shit-ton of miles) – post the 2008 recession people started buying more used-cars and it drove up the used-car-market – and the other day I heard on the radio someone saying that used-car-prices have increased by about 25% in the last year alone – and a lot of people have been buying new cars lately w/ all the government $$$ they are getting (and there are some people that have put off paying rent b/c of the Covid law and have used that $$$ to buy a new cars) – and there seems to be new-inventory issues w/ car-makers not being able to get the materials to build all the cars they want (chips shortages, etc) which like will drive up car-prices.

I can “afford” a fairly-nice new car but if I get back into clubbing like I did in past years then it’d be hard for me to be paying for a nice new car, clubbing like I used to club (a good amount); and also be able to save-and-invest – at least one of the 3 is gonna suffer and in the last few years I’ve preferred to not put $$$ into a nice-car and have that $$$ free for other things.

You know what? I keep telling myself I can afford a new car, too. Then I start thinking about how much I hate working for a boss and how close I am to telling everyone to fuck off like that burger guy in the movie “Half Baked”, and I change my mind and start hoarding pennies and skip going to the clubs.

My next vehicle I buy will be an electric one, because I think I want to avoid filling up at the gas station when all I will need to do is plug it in. After figuring the cost of maintenance and oil changes the lifetime savings of not only money, but time will add up to make EV cars a more economical choice.

I'm usually late-to-the-game on trends; i.e. I'm rarely an "early-adopter" to anything (tech, music, etc) - but I too would like to get an EV-car - for me it has to do w/ just having a simpler vehicle and not have to worry about maintaining a complex ICE engine - I also HATE the noise many ICE engines make; i.e. noise-pollution – my backyard faces a 4-lane street and if I have my windows open, loud ICE engines (muscle-cars; big pick-ups; motorcycles; etc) are a PITA w/ the noise they make – I especially hate those super-loud aftermarket mufflers many young punks put in their cars that just make way too much noise and IMO create too-much of an annoyance.

What keeps me from an EV is that I don’t have an enclosed garage to put one of those special chargers at home that fast charger; I also would have access to only one car (it’s not as if I could borrow another family member’s car if mine was charging); and there aren’t that many charging-stations near my Cuban-hood.

FYI EV charging should not be treated like charging your consumer electronics. Batteries only have a certain number of cycles in their life. Only charge the EV when near empty, similar to how you treat a non-EV, otherwise you will not realize the full life (up to 200k miles in many cases) of your EV battery. Also charging isn't "free" in most cases since you are paying for electricity at your residence or paying to use a charging station.

@Papi
The city of Miami in Florida, United States, has 499 public charging station ports (Level 2 and Level 3) within 15km. 83% of the ports are level 2 charging ports and 30% of the ports offer free charges for your electric car.