5 ms·

"As low as $6/hour" Which means you can expect ~50% more than that for the realistic case -- maybe $9-10/hour. Which (at $200+/day) is no better than an averag

"As low as $6/hour" Which means you can expect ~50% more than that for the realistic case -- maybe $9-10/hour. Which (at $200+/day) is no better than an average rental car.

rocky1138 11y ago
Yeah, but I'd love to be able to rent a car for just three hours.
- freehunter 11y ago
  Heck, it'd be nice to be able to park my truck outside of the city limits and borrow a subcompact until I get downtown. I don't need to tow downtown and I don't need four wheel drive downtown, so why try to find a place where I can parallel park a full sized pickup truck when I could ditch it outside of town and borrow a Sonic for 20 minutes?
  - VLM 11y ago
    Meanwhile I'd like to borrow your truck because I live out in the burbs and need to carry 1000 pounds of crushed gravel home. The competitors are truck delivery for $50 or whatever it is, and the $19.95 for 3 hours home depot truck rental, so the pricing is kinda constrained... I suspect this will be a problem with truck rentals. I'm a clean gentleman and I'll sweep out your truck after removing my 20 bags of gravel... but you just know there's gonna be people hauling hundreds of pounds of raw chicken manure for composting or whatever...
    - freehunter 11y ago
      Yeah, I am much more picky when it comes to letting people borrow my truck than I am my car, and the car is newer and worth substantially more money. When people want to borrow my car, they just want to get from A to B. Worst thing that can happen is they spill their Starbucks or they're a little too hard on the throttle and they burn up my full tank of gas. When they want to borrow my truck, they want to haul things with it. When you're hauling with someone else's truck, weigh limits don't matter because transmissions don't usually fail spectacularly the first time you haul 3000 lbs over the towing limit. Frames don't get bent and shocks don't get blown the first time you load the bed down with 500 lbs too many cinder blocks. What's the tongue weight limit on your friend's truck? What's the bed weight limit? Doesn't matter, right? Plus the liability if they don't hook up the trailer right, aren't using the lights or sway bar, etc. And god forbid they drive it in four wheel drive on dry pavement and wreck my center differential. The very nature of "I need to borrow a truck" is the very reason why I don't lend mine out, and likely the reason why renting a truck is so expensive. Driving a rental car hard is nothing compared to driving a rental truck hard.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
If you need to rent for a day, sure. But services like these target shorter-term rentals.
ghaff 11y ago
i.e. pretty much the same as Zipcar short-term rentals (which seems to be $7.50-$8.50/hr). Zipcar at least also has a daily option that's about $70, so in the same ballpark as rentals. (Though people I know who use Zipcar often use car rental services like rent-a-wreck for daily rentals.) They typically use the short term rentals to run errands or otherwise go places for a few hours.
- MrFoof 11y ago
  The only ZipCars you'll find for ~$8/hour are hybrids. I live in Boston, and unless I book the car well in advance (or am willing to go well out of my way to get it), they're long gone. $10-13/hour is much more typical with what's available on a "right now and near me" basis.

"As low as $6/hour" Which means you can expect ~50% more than that for the realistic case -- maybe $9-10/hour. Which (at $200+/day) is no better than an average rental car.

rocky1138 11y ago

Yeah, but I'd love to be able to rent a car for just three hours.

freehunter 11y ago
Heck, it'd be nice to be able to park my truck outside of the city limits and borrow a subcompact until I get downtown. I don't need to tow downtown and I don't need four wheel drive downtown, so why try to find a place where I can parallel park a full sized pickup truck when I could ditch it outside of town and borrow a Sonic for 20 minutes?
- VLM 11y ago
  Meanwhile I'd like to borrow your truck because I live out in the burbs and need to carry 1000 pounds of crushed gravel home. The competitors are truck delivery for $50 or whatever it is, and the $19.95 for 3 hours home depot truck rental, so the pricing is kinda constrained... I suspect this will be a problem with truck rentals. I'm a clean gentleman and I'll sweep out your truck after removing my 20 bags of gravel... but you just know there's gonna be people hauling hundreds of pounds of raw chicken manure for composting or whatever...
  - freehunter 11y ago
    Yeah, I am much more picky when it comes to letting people borrow my truck than I am my car, and the car is newer and worth substantially more money. When people want to borrow my car, they just want to get from A to B. Worst thing that can happen is they spill their Starbucks or they're a little too hard on the throttle and they burn up my full tank of gas. When they want to borrow my truck, they want to haul things with it. When you're hauling with someone else's truck, weigh limits don't matter because transmissions don't usually fail spectacularly the first time you haul 3000 lbs over the towing limit. Frames don't get bent and shocks don't get blown the first time you load the bed down with 500 lbs too many cinder blocks. What's the tongue weight limit on your friend's truck? What's the bed weight limit? Doesn't matter, right? Plus the liability if they don't hook up the trailer right, aren't using the lights or sway bar, etc. And god forbid they drive it in four wheel drive on dry pavement and wreck my center differential. The very nature of "I need to borrow a truck" is the very reason why I don't lend mine out, and likely the reason why renting a truck is so expensive. Driving a rental car hard is nothing compared to driving a rental truck hard.

JoshTriplett 11y ago

If you need to rent for a day, sure. But services like these target shorter-term rentals.

ghaff 11y ago

i.e. pretty much the same as Zipcar short-term rentals (which seems to be $7.50-$8.50/hr). Zipcar at least also has a daily option that's about $70, so in the same ballpark as rentals. (Though people I know who use Zipcar often use car rental services like rent-a-wreck for daily rentals.) They typically use the short term rentals to run errands or otherwise go places for a few hours.

MrFoof 11y ago
The only ZipCars you'll find for ~$8/hour are hybrids. I live in Boston, and unless I book the car well in advance (or am willing to go well out of my way to get it), they're long gone. $10-13/hour is much more typical with what's available on a "right now and near me" basis.