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> The company also found that Dollar Thrifty had let the tires on its cars get thinner than Hertz allowed, and many had to be replaced at a cost of $30 million

by rb808 6y ago

> The company also found that Dollar Thrifty had let the tires on its cars get thinner than Hertz allowed, and many had to be replaced at a cost of $30 million I always wonder if its worth going cheaper or more expensive when renting cars. Stuff like this is interesting, I wonder how many other corners are cut at the cheaper places.

juskrey 6y ago
I was able to get very cheap deals at renown companies with high quality service and also had to use expensive deals at very shitty ones. With massive rental cars franchising you never know. Rental car is always a potential problem and should be treated as such. Hence, the main property you should be looking for is how does the rental company manage problems. Starting from the rental garage (when you point to some issue like worn out tires) and throughout the road. Also it means you should make some trial and errors.
hylaride 6y ago
I've always rented from Hertz because they've historically been the least hassle, if more expensive than Enterprise. I live in downtown Toronto and don't own a car. I use car sharing for local needs, but the traditional car rental companies for when I need to leave the city. Enterprise has been consistently terrible. On multiple occasions I've had to wait hours past my scheduled pick-up time due to either understaffing, overbooking, and/or due to other events. Enterprise apparently has a deal with insurance companies where they loan cars after accidents. I once had to wait 12 hours for a car as they were over-booked due to accidents after a snow storm. One time I was rear-ended in an enterprise-rented car. The other person's insurance dealt with the damages, but 18 months later they called me up, demanding payment for the time the car was in the shop. I used to rent from national/alamo as they would rent to me w/o mandatory extra insurance when I was under 25. They were bought out by enterprise and almost immediately went downhill. Hertz has always had a car available when promised. I can also take the rentals across the border to the US w/o extra fees. Twice they had to upsize my car for whatever reasons and they gave me a discount to deal with the greater fuel consumption. As somebody who is a loyal Hertz customer, I worry what the company will look like after the bankruptcy.
- yardie 6y ago
  I've also had similar experiences with Enterprise. The outcome was different. In a few cases I've driven off with cars from their luxury fleet because the car I had reserved, midsize SUV, was unavailable. So for $50/day/weekend I've driven XC90, Escalade, and a F150. But I've never had to wait 12 hours. They'd call in a car from another location before that would happen. Also, great experiences with Hertz. I've rented through them in many countries and it's always been great service.
- microtherion 6y ago
  What I liked about Hertz was being able to choose a particular from a collection of models in the chosen size category, which allowed me to get the combination of CarPlay and rear camera that I liked. As for the article blaming their fleet for sticking with sedans for too long, to me as a European traveler, this is a feature. One time, I rented from a different company, which "generously" stuck me with some monster SUV, and I mostly hated the experience.
  - chadash 6y ago
    > As for the article blaming their fleet for sticking with sedans for too long, to me as a European traveler, this is a feature. One time, I rented from a different company, which "generously" stuck me with some monster SUV, and I mostly hated the experience. I also like sedans, particularly small ones that don't use much fuel. And all of the rental companies have sedans in their fleets. The issue is that they depreciate quickly because of Americans' preferences for trucks and SUVs. I'm gonna make up some numbers here, but they illustrate the point. A Toyota Tacoma that costs $30,000 new might retain 75% of it's value after 3 years and 30,000 miles (these numbers are approximate). So you sell it for $22,500 and you take a $7,500 depreciation hit. Meanwhile, an Hyundai Elantra that costs $21,000 retains 55% of it's value over that same period, so you can sell it for $11,500 and take a $9,450 depreciation hit. As a general rule, trucks seem to retain their value very well, followed by SUVs and then sedans (at least in the US). Luxury sedans devalue the most. The issue that Hertz had is that they bought a bunch of sedans and then the market preference shifted heavily to SUVs (with oil prices being low). So their initial calculations showed that they'd be able to sell their cars on the used market for price $X, but then they ended up being worth a lower amount, $Y, when consumer preferences shifted.
ebiester 6y ago
The more and less expensive places are owned by the same companies in most cases. The flagship gets the newest cars. When they get a bit older, they get moved to the mid-tier prices, then to the cheapest places, before sold as used cars in wholesale. So that would be Hertz-Dollar-Thrifty, And you can quickly find out many of the rest. I don’t know how Enterprise manages its fleet though.
rconti 6y ago
It's stunning to me that such a (seemingly?) relatively modest maintenance cost would be specifically called out as a massive oversight. Perhaps I'm thinking about this the wrong way. Oil changes cost next to nothing, the customer pays for fuel, everything from brakes to suspension components on down to wiper blades are irrelevant when they sell the cars before any of that stuff needs to be replaced. Maybe tires actually are their biggest wear item? While you might generally not have to replace tires before, say, 30k miles, the tires on a rental car do not exactly live an easy life, and when you're talking about fleets going up to 50k miles, they'll absolutely be needing replacement. It also makes me wonder if Dollar Thrifty was letting them get illegally low, or just below the Hertz standard.

by rb808 6y ago

juskrey 6y ago

I was able to get very cheap deals at renown companies with high quality service and also had to use expensive deals at very shitty ones. With massive rental cars franchising you never know. Rental car is always a potential problem and should be treated as such. Hence, the main property you should be looking for is how does the rental company manage problems. Starting from the rental garage (when you point to some issue like worn out tires) and throughout the road. Also it means you should make some trial and errors.

hylaride 6y ago

I've always rented from Hertz because they've historically been the least hassle, if more expensive than Enterprise. I live in downtown Toronto and don't own a car. I use car sharing for local needs, but the traditional car rental companies for when I need to leave the city. Enterprise has been consistently terrible. On multiple occasions I've had to wait hours past my scheduled pick-up time due to either understaffing, overbooking, and/or due to other events. Enterprise apparently has a deal with insurance companies where they loan cars after accidents. I once had to wait 12 hours for a car as they were over-booked due to accidents after a snow storm. One time I was rear-ended in an enterprise-rented car. The other person's insurance dealt with the damages, but 18 months later they called me up, demanding payment for the time the car was in the shop. I used to rent from national/alamo as they would rent to me w/o mandatory extra insurance when I was under 25. They were bought out by enterprise and almost immediately went downhill. Hertz has always had a car available when promised. I can also take the rentals across the border to the US w/o extra fees. Twice they had to upsize my car for whatever reasons and they gave me a discount to deal with the greater fuel consumption. As somebody who is a loyal Hertz customer, I worry what the company will look like after the bankruptcy.

yardie 6y ago
I've also had similar experiences with Enterprise. The outcome was different. In a few cases I've driven off with cars from their luxury fleet because the car I had reserved, midsize SUV, was unavailable. So for $50/day/weekend I've driven XC90, Escalade, and a F150. But I've never had to wait 12 hours. They'd call in a car from another location before that would happen. Also, great experiences with Hertz. I've rented through them in many countries and it's always been great service.
microtherion 6y ago
What I liked about Hertz was being able to choose a particular from a collection of models in the chosen size category, which allowed me to get the combination of CarPlay and rear camera that I liked. As for the article blaming their fleet for sticking with sedans for too long, to me as a European traveler, this is a feature. One time, I rented from a different company, which "generously" stuck me with some monster SUV, and I mostly hated the experience.
- chadash 6y ago
  > As for the article blaming their fleet for sticking with sedans for too long, to me as a European traveler, this is a feature. One time, I rented from a different company, which "generously" stuck me with some monster SUV, and I mostly hated the experience. I also like sedans, particularly small ones that don't use much fuel. And all of the rental companies have sedans in their fleets. The issue is that they depreciate quickly because of Americans' preferences for trucks and SUVs. I'm gonna make up some numbers here, but they illustrate the point. A Toyota Tacoma that costs $30,000 new might retain 75% of it's value after 3 years and 30,000 miles (these numbers are approximate). So you sell it for $22,500 and you take a $7,500 depreciation hit. Meanwhile, an Hyundai Elantra that costs $21,000 retains 55% of it's value over that same period, so you can sell it for $11,500 and take a $9,450 depreciation hit. As a general rule, trucks seem to retain their value very well, followed by SUVs and then sedans (at least in the US). Luxury sedans devalue the most. The issue that Hertz had is that they bought a bunch of sedans and then the market preference shifted heavily to SUVs (with oil prices being low). So their initial calculations showed that they'd be able to sell their cars on the used market for price $X, but then they ended up being worth a lower amount, $Y, when consumer preferences shifted.

ebiester 6y ago

The more and less expensive places are owned by the same companies in most cases. The flagship gets the newest cars. When they get a bit older, they get moved to the mid-tier prices, then to the cheapest places, before sold as used cars in wholesale. So that would be Hertz-Dollar-Thrifty, And you can quickly find out many of the rest. I don’t know how Enterprise manages its fleet though.

rconti 6y ago

It's stunning to me that such a (seemingly?) relatively modest maintenance cost would be specifically called out as a massive oversight. Perhaps I'm thinking about this the wrong way. Oil changes cost next to nothing, the customer pays for fuel, everything from brakes to suspension components on down to wiper blades are irrelevant when they sell the cars before any of that stuff needs to be replaced. Maybe tires actually are their biggest wear item? While you might generally not have to replace tires before, say, 30k miles, the tires on a rental car do not exactly live an easy life, and when you're talking about fleets going up to 50k miles, they'll absolutely be needing replacement. It also makes me wonder if Dollar Thrifty was letting them get illegally low, or just below the Hertz standard.