One way car rentals

[Hockeychic]

Has anyone ever gotten a one way car rental. Toronto to Orlando?

We are considering it for our next trip and just flying home

Thankyou

 

[michelb]

I can't imagine this would be cheap and I can't imagine the rental location you are getting the car from being happy to let you use one of their cars (in my experience, just doing a one way rental to a location 30 minutes away is difficult because the original location says it's hard to get the car back and then they have a car less in their inventory).

But I'm curious to know what you find out!


FWIW, I just tried from Costco Rentals and for a one week rental from July 6 to July 13th with pickup at YYZ and drop off at MCO, only AVIS offered it. It's $662 for an intermediate, $691 for a full-size and $11,650 (yes almost $12k !!!) for an intermediate SUV !!! (Only those 3 vehicle categories were available). To put it in perspective, MCO-MCO with AVIS is $234USD / $285USD (Alamo is $265USD) / $277USD (Alamo is $265USD) for the same 3 classes so there is a premium but it's not actually as much as I thought.

 

[Hockeychic]

Thank you!!! I Tried Alamo and Budget and they all said no cars avail and since I am looking at about 7 months from now I figured it was just not allowed. I will try Avis.

Thank you!!
Kim

 

[Sue M]

I’ve only done one way rentals within Florida, Ft Lauderdale to Orlando. I always use Costco, I’ve found they have the best price and include extra driver for free.

 

[Mikey15]

Thank you!!! I Tried Alamo and Budget and they all said no cars avail and since I am looking at about 7 months from now I figured it was just not allowed. I will try Avis.

Thank you!!
Kim

Given the timing, I'd look into something like this:
https://carstoflorida.com/drivers.phpPeople get paid to drive Snowbirds' cars to Florida while the snowbirds fly down. Could actually make some $$$ instead of paying premium for a one-way rental.

 

[bankr63]

One other idea to look at is renting from a closer US city (Buffalo) if you can get a drive. Some US rental companies (not sure which ones anymore) have a "floating fleet". It doesn't matter where the car goes in the continental US and they don't charge much for one-way. I would expect that the fee for a Canadian car being dropped in the US would be much higher as the companies are generally different operating entities across borders. It would be harder for say Budget in Orlando to rent a Canadian plated and owned car for local use.

Back when I was much younger I used to drive deadheads for a rental company to get cars back to their owning agency location. That's what the drop fee was meant to cover; the cost of sending a team of drivers to return cars to where they belong. Actually would guess that is the reason for the huge fee on the SUV. We generally only drove high (rental) value vehicles back; the cheaper ones they would just hope to find a one-way going the other way.

 

[FigmentSpark]

Try Buffalo to Orlando for a one way rental. You can always drive your own car to Buffalo, but, of course, you have to park it. I think the one way thing is a problem between countries.

 

[michelb]

Given the timing, I'd look into something like this:
https://carstoflorida.com/drivers.phpPeople get paid to drive Snowbirds' cars to Florida while the snowbirds fly down. Could actually make some $$$ instead of paying premium for a one-way rental.

That's not a bad idea but I suspect the OP wants to use the car in Florida as well (although I guess they could probably get a rental car there).