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I would like to drive rental car cross country in June from home in SF Bay Area to East Coast. What would be cheapest place to drop off a rental car (Orlando Florida.i.e. or Newark New Jersey). This would be 7 to 10 days Is there a way to access this information? I know some companies have driveaway services.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dogmama50
San Fran to Orlando is about 42 hours of driving, Newark 43. For a 7-10 day trip all you will be doing is driving and sleeping.
7-10 days = 168 to 240 hrs.
minus 42 driving = 126 - 198 hrs... that is a LOT of sleeping!
You sound like some of my 'driving' employees! (I spent 40+ yrs as a CDL commercial driver.. 4 hr driving days would have gotten me fired day one). Most of us do x-C USA in 3 days (weekly, herding 80,000# over ice and snow). Taking 5 days would be your final trip.
OP--- Check with rental car companies, some need cars 'relocated', so will have a preference where you drop.
They will grant you plenty of time to get there.
Most people avoid the "driveaways" like the plague. Do you really want some stranger driving your vehicle across the country? Besides, you can place a car on a semi for about $1500 and the car is fully ensured and professionally driven and delivered.
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Back to the topic.
A one-way rental between the Bay Area and the East Coast will cost you $1000-1100 with Hertz and Budget for a 10 day rental, maybe less if you are a member of AAA or AARP. That is pretty consistent in the half dozen places I checked from Boston to Orlando. And in order to get that rate, you need to rent at a NON-AIRPORT location.
To reduce the rate, of course, you could make the drive in 5-7 days.
This was about three years ago, but we got a killer deal from from Enterprise on Kayak picking up a to drive a Camry in Boston and driving it to SF. Rental was $225 and they were flexible about where we picked up and dropped off.
Rental car pricing is even more opaque than airline pricing. The best thing you can really do is collect a bunch of discount codes from different sources (AAA, Costco, airline and hotel loyalty programs, etc) and then just make a plane to use those to check for better rates every two weeks or so as well as doing a general rental car search on something like Expedia at that interval. I never do advanced purchase rental car rates because there always seems to be a point when, just by rechecking, I can find something for 30-40% lower than the original quote just by being persistent with the rechecks.
7-10 days = 168 to 240 hrs.
minus 42 driving = 126 - 198 hrs... that is a LOT of sleeping!
You sound like some of my 'driving' employees! (I spent 40+ yrs as a CDL commercial driver.. 4 hr driving days would have gotten me fired day one). Most of us do x-C USA in 3 days (weekly, herding 80,000# over ice and snow). Taking 5 days would be your final trip.
OP--- Check with rental car companies, some need cars 'relocated', so will have a preference where you drop.
They will grant you plenty of time to get there.
If it's your job, then blowing across the country in 4 days is fine, done it myself may times for relocation. However if you are coming from another country and presumably want to visit some of the amazing things along the route 7-10 days is pretty useless.
This was about three years ago, but we got a killer deal from from Enterprise on Kayak picking up a to drive a Camry in Boston and driving it to SF. Rental was $225 and they were flexible about where we picked up and dropped off.
Wow, that sounds great. I've wanted to drive across the country for many years. It'll be harder for me since I live outside the continental US but I'd be happy if I could even do half that distance. How long did your drive take? Did you stop along the way? I googled that trip and looks like you can pass Chicago and Denver or Salt Lake City depending on which route you take.
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