If you need to rent a truck...

We all know the horrible tales from the place that lets "YOU HAUL" your own stuff. I can personally attest to that. Crappy old trucks with a zillion miles and lots of deferred maintenance are the norm. Low rates, but they charge you by the mile, so the final bill is never low.

I moved house this week - needed a van for the stuff I didn't want movers to move.

Enterprise rents trucks. Mostly to businesses, but they're happy to do personal rentals as well. Being a (mostly) B2B business, the customer service is a cut above the rest.

I rented a RAM ProMaster (I think it was a 2500) LWB, high roof. I drove it off the lot with 1167 miles on the odometer. Had more space inside that some apartments I've lived in. Just a V6, but that was perfectly okay for my needs.

Including 100 free miles, it cost me $70.XX, out the door. That's maybe $25-30 more than those other guys would have charged me for a 10-year-old Econoline with 300,000 miles on it.

Big shout out to, and personal recommendation for, Enterprise Truck Rental.

Isn't that where Aussie rented that Ram from to tow to the challenge?

Another good place if it's a very short term rental: Home Depot! Or Menards. You get a nice flat bed pickup for 70-90 minutes (depending on the store) with unlimited mileage for $20 or so.

Obviously wouldn't work for long distances but sometimes you need to move one big thing a little ways and a Uhaul/etc is too much work and more expensive.

...or that one buddy with a pickup that owes you a favor.

I've yet to see a pickup that has as much room as the big ProMaster!

My bumper sticker:

Yes, this is my truck. No, I won't help you move.

dculberson wrote: Another good place if it's a very short term rental: Home Depot! Or Menards. You get a nice flat bed pickup for 70-90 minutes (depending on the store) with unlimited mileage for $20 or so.

Mmm hmm. Nephew of mine used to rent one twice a day for certain jobs. Once in the morning to get everything to the site. A second time in the evening to bring it all home.

I rented a van from U-Haul recently. It was a brand new Ford Transit mid-roof. Moved my new dual sport well enough.

In this area a lot of the storage room rental places have mid size box vans that they loan out for free if you rent storage from them. Many of the lots will rent these out for a couple days at a time to anyone if their tenants haven't scheduled them. I've caught really good deals for weekend rentals on them before.

The enterprise truck rental we used with my previous business would rent anything to anybody, as long as you had a valid license for the equipment. You could get a 24' real-deal box truck with big diesel and air brakes that was 6" short of needing a CDL for really good rates, and it was brand new equipment.

EvanR wrote: I've yet to see a pickup that has as much room as the big ProMaster!

You're not thinking vertically.

I had good luck with Budget for my last move. It ended up being cheaper than ew-haul, especially after I used retail-me-not and applied the code for an AARP discount at the age of about 25...

Truck was good and solid with absolutely no problems, I got it (16 footer) for three days with unlimited mileage for a one-way move for ~$180 with an additional $150 deposit that was returned.

My brother has used Penske and they were solid as well.

I have also used Enterprise truck rental on a professional basis with great success. I hauled a few subway car brake discs about 650 miles and back.

Apexcarver wrote: Truck was good and solid with absolutely no problems, I got it (16 footer) for three days with unlimited mileage for a one-way move for ~$180 with an additional $150 deposit that was returned.

That is a great deal!

SWMBO has some things to get hauled up from Richmond, a dining room table, chairs and a hutch, we hadn't even thought of Enterprise for a van. Their fleets are kept in good shape and general less then 36 months old. Thanks for the reminder!

Penske had the best trucks when we were moving a few years back. Not sure if they do pickup-type rentals, but it may vary by store.

Have you guys really had that much issue with Uhual? I've found them to be pretty good vehicles when I use them. Maybe that is reflective of the places that I've been renting them from rather than Uhaul on the whole.

In any case, they're the only ones I know that rent trailers, which are usually $20 or $30 a day with no mileage restraints.

Ian F wrote: I rented a van from U-Haul recently. It was a brand new Ford Transit mid-roof. Moved my new dual sport well enough.

Oooh, spill it, what'd you get?

mtn wrote: Have you guys really had that much issue with Uhaul?

As a matter of fact, I have. The engine in one of their trucks blew up on the interstate with all of my worldly possessions in it. When I called the 1-800 number, they asked me what made me think the engine had blown up. I told the loud boom, followed by a cloud of blue smoke that obscured my wife following e in another vehicle. They still sent someone out to verify it. It took them all day to get a wrecker out there, tow it to the closest store and repack into a new truck, which wouldn't turn hard right, which I found out AFTER I pulled out into busy traffic in Augusta, Georgia rush hour.

Six months later we were moving again with a large trailer, which when I dropped off, one of the rear tires did its best stance imitation, because it had no bearings inside the wheel bearing. Fortunately, I had no idea until I dropped it off.

By far the best experience with them though was the car trailer I last rented.

spitfirebill wrote:

mtn wrote: Have you guys really had that much issue with Uhaul?

As a matter of fact, I have.

+1

Rented a truck once, wasnt running on all cylinders.

rented a trailer another time, it had a duct-taped together brake master with dry rotted tires. Had a failure on I70, their roadside assistance wasnt familiar with that road*. It then took 6 hours for them to bring us a spare. The spare was even more dry rotted than the failed tire. It failed another hour and a half into the trip, still on I70, in Morgantown WV, response time to bring another spare 4 hours.

(*side rant; Who the EFF hasnt heard of I70? I actually had to tell them to look at the map and look at the highway that goes from baltimore, MD alll the way to Denver, Colorado. SERIOUSLY)

NEVER AGAIN, NOT IF YOU PAID ME

sorry, it was years ago and I still steam over it.

mtn wrote: Have you guys really had that much issue with Uhual? I've found them to be pretty good vehicles when I use them. Maybe that is reflective of the places that I've been renting them from rather than Uhaul on the whole. In any case, they're the only ones I know that rent trailers, which are usually $20 or $30 a day with no mileage restraints.

Yes, yes they can be. There is a reason I steered my friend to Budget for her 1-way trip from Indianapolis to Denver.....budget also rents trailers as well, so does Penske. For never driving anything bigger than a Honda Fit, she made the trip rather uneventfully with a loaded down 14' cube van & car trailer with said Fit on it....She did however completely ignore my explicit instructions to stop relatively often to check the ratchet straps on the car. By the time she got there, it had nearly fallen off the runners due to the rear strap coming off.

For that move, Budget worked out to being roughly 1/2 as expensive as uhaul.

mtn wrote: Have you guys really had that much issue with Uhual?

Yeah, back in '04 I rented one of their trucks for a local move (so it only cost me double their "advertised" price). Truck was OK but I rented a furniture dolly with it.

Turned it in late using a drop box and put the whole thing behind me until I got hit with another $500 charge (!!!!!!???) so I call and they tell me that they charged me for keeping their furniture dolly. They insisted that I had so I went down to their site and produced the dolly still in a truck (different truck). They refunded me some of the money but charged me a $25 a day rental on the dolly which had been in their possession the whole time. Ended up being a $150 lesson. Uhaul corporate refused to help telling me it was an independently owned franchise. Local DA wouldn't help because it "wasn't big enough a fraud".

I came close to burning that place to the ground.

captdownshift wrote: SWMBO has some things to get hauled up from Richmond, a dining room table, chairs and a hutch, we hadn't even thought of Enterprise for a van. Their fleets are kept in good shape and general less then 36 months old. Thanks for the reminder!

Threadjack - I'm in Richmond, let me know if y'all need another set of hands.

Okay, carry on.

Since there was a request for U-Haul bashing, I'll offer my experience, none of which is particularly recent.

First was the time I reserved a truck months in advance. The big day comes, I go to pick it up, and they don't have one that big. They give me a much smaller truck. I get that sometimes stuff is late showing up or whatever, but the guy was rude. I had to make two trips when I had planned one. Sucked.

Second time I was helping out a lady friend. Truck was beat to E36 M3 and ran with a dead miss in at least one cylinder. It turned in an impressive low-single-digits fuel economy, and would barely get to highway speeds.

KyAllroad wrote: Uhaul corporate refused to help telling me it was an independently owned franchise. Local DA wouldn't help because it "wasn't big enough a fraud". I came close to burning that place to the ground.

This is a key point with the orange truck people. The corporate owned stores are hit or miss, but NEVER go to an independent. Srsly, there's a "gift shop" (video gambling) locally that's right next to a strip joint that rents UHaul trucks. Who in their right mind...?

In reply to ultraclyde:

Well, I suppose if you need to get a truckload of strippers somewhere...or maybe just 1 or 2 really large ones???