Car hire in USA

[LoopyLu2019]

DP and I are considering a holiday to Vegas and California in June/July. We're wanting to drive around to Yosemite, Grand Canyon, San Francisco etc but car hire seems extortionate!!! Anyone know anyway of getting them cheaper like risking booking once out there? I know trains are normally quite cheap so we could use trains for longer distances and only hire a car for more rural trips.

Where are you looking? USA is really cheap to hire a car. I’ve hired and driven an SUV from San Francisco to LA over a few days for a couple of hundred pounds. Think I booked through BA/Avis too so not bargain basement.

some car hire company's charge more if you pick up the car from a airport.Try kayak to compare prices,i recommend national

We’ve done that trip and I would recommend a car for the duration except in the cities as it’s great to have the flexibility to take detours and not rely on train/bus timetables. Have you tried holiday autos or car hire comparison websites? We’ve always reserved small cars in the states or Canada and always end up with a massive car which is quite handy but don’t bother paying for an SUV etc as you’ll likely get one anyway!

It's much, much cheaper to buy the insurance here before you go. We found the car hire cost not too bad (Phoenix airport - Enterprise) until we collected the car and they tried to sell us the insurance which was the same cost as the car hire. So we found some wifi and bought the insurance from a UK website. You also have to pay by credit card. We had the cash in my bank account (it was our honeymoon so money from wedding guests) and they wouldn't accept cash or debit card. Luckily we did have a back up credit card with just enough money on it but would have been stranded on our driving holiday if we didn't have it. Some of this may sound obvious but we didn't know! Even though it was probably in their terms and conditions

BA do amazing deals on carhire if you get flights from them. We’ve booked a month of car hire in the US with a big people carrier very reasonable with reasonable flights too.Think we got £1k off car hire.You might have to book a nights hotel too to qualify. Ring and get them to fiddle around with where to pick up etc.

Expedia have great rates for car hire. We are hiring next week and are dropping off in a different state, so one way. That can add ££££ to the cost and it varies enormously. That is probably why you are seeing such high costs. Obviously size of car matters and time of year, but drop off charges can be hundreds of £.

For USA trips we’ve used Virgin Holidays car hire ( only car hire ) and always found prices competitive.

You’re paying in £ here , pick the car up at the airport and the car hire company over there often has a separate desk for Virgin customers flying in from UK.

We go for small or medium SUV , it’ll be QAshqai sized. As people have mentioned you may well get an upgrade in size too.

Unless you’re looking for a Mustang convertible prices are good value in my experience.

I hired a car via Alamo, hired in the UK and picked up from LAX airport. We were met by a little minibus and taken to the car hire place. It was really cheap. I was going to hire a car from Vegas however we ended up flying from Vegas to Lax due to fires closing most of the main roads.

We went a few years ago, hired from Las Vegas with Alamo, paid £400 for three weeks for an intermediate suv (Jeep Cherokee) including extra driver, collision damage waiver, extended liability and unlimited mileage, sales tax etc. Buy in advance and then you don’t have the insurance nonsense which bumps cost up. They have a special uk portal for out of us hire. They’ll still try and upsell you on pick up, just show your voucher and say is all included. You’ll need a credit card, as per above.

When you’re there, we were prepared to use data and Waze apps but they basically waved us to a section of cars and told us to pick one out, so we got one with sat nav and cruise control. The guy thought we were crazy when we double checked it was within our t&cs :D

Fuel effiency is pretty bad but petrol is a lot cheaper. Also most models are automatic of course, which i realised is actually quite helpful for the kind of driving you do.

Look at the flight and car hire combination prices on BA etc, usually is much more competitive. BA also throws in a free additional driver.

I buy an annual car excess insurance policy here for all my car hire (I think it's with Questor), about £50 and covers loads of stuff.

Thanks everyone, will do some more digging. We're trying to do it on a budget as much as possible as we're a bit tight for cash but don't want to miss out as my flights are paid for luckily!

As others say car hire is generally cheaper to do before you go, and using a UK company means all taxes and insurance is paid for and sorted. Fuel is mega cheap (think half the cost of our own). And it's quite easy to eat cheaply if you're happy with fast food and happy hours! We just got back from Vegas budgeting about $100 a day between the 2 of us and managed just fine. Have a fab time :) (ps hugely recommend Valley of Fire, it's about 1.5 hrs from Vegas and beautiful).

(We do car excess insurance too as it covers damage to windscreen, tires etc which standard insurance usually doesn't, costs about £20 one off)