Here’s a car rental win-win
I recently rented a oneway rental car for dirt cheap. Want to know how I scored the deal? I got ahead of a peak travel time and got a repositioning deal from a rental company.
If you’re familiar with cruise ships, maybe you’ve heard of a repositioning deal before. That’s where you get a supercheap price on a cruise simply because the cruise line has to move the ship back from where it already is to a hot vacation market.
Not a lot of people know this, but it’s possible to get the equivalent in the car rental industry.
Car rental companies have to move cars around to meet demand, and they will give you a great deal on a one-way rental if you can help them.
In April, there’s often a mad rush to get cars from across the nation to hot vacation destinations like Florida.
But now that we’re past the peak spring break season, you can find companies offering rentals for as little as $5 or $10 per day if you can move their vehicles from Florida to anywhere up north where they’d be more productive.
Think about it: It’s certainly to the benefit of the rental companies to offer these deals. Otherwise they’d have to fly paid employees out to do the same work or load cars on trucks to move them around.
The real key to getting these kinds of deals is to be ahead of the curve. So call around to a few agencies that are located at airports several weeks before a peak travel time and ask if they’re participating in these kinds of deals and where they need their cars moved.
Because of the cheap price, there will be a lot of restrictions on these deals — plus additional taxes and fees. But if you can make it work, this is a real steal.
I would up paying a total of $26.01 for a two-day rental of a Toyota RAV 4 with unlimited mileage. The quoted rate before all the junk fees were added in was $7.99 a day for the vehicle.
And get this, I could have had that rate for two weeks if I needed it.
Most of the deals like this are good through May 31. Check RentalCars.com to see if this could work for you.
This is the kind of deal that you can turn into a hat trick if you grab a cheap one-way ticket into Florida. Check ClarkDeals.com for the latest airline deals.
You get to use the car as your transportation while you’re in Florida and then you use it to drive home instead of flying.
So let’s see … a cheap flight in, a cheap rental car and cheap transportation back home. That really is a threefer!
ABOUT CLARK HOWARD
Clark Howard helps you save more, spend less, and avoid rip-offs. Visit ClarkHoward. com for more info, or get his best-selling books signed with free shipping at GetClarkSmart.com. Listen to Clark Howard weeknights from 6 to 8 p.m. on AM 1290 and News 95.7 WHIO.