Can you road trip with a rental car

Consider these factors:. You get Hour Hotline Assistance as well , so if you have an issue on the road, you can call us anytime. Gas Mileage: If your daily driver is a GMC Yukon that gets 17 mpg combined, consider leaving it parked and renting a fuel-sipper for your road trip. That means you can go more than three times the distance on a single gallon of gas.

Every mile results in a certain amount of wear and tear to the engine, the tires and other moving parts. ItStillRuns offers an easy way to calculate wear-and-tear costs by the mile.

Lease Penalties: Folks who lease their car might also shy away from long trips. If the bottom-line cost of driving your own car vs. Weekly rates are usually the way to go for the best value. Be sure to add in gas costs, rental insurance and any extra fees, too.

Using this road trip rental car vs. There is no hard and fast rule for determining whether it makes more sense to rent a car or use your own vehicle for a road trip. Type the country where you will be spending the most amount of time. View all of our travel insurance products. Terms, conditions, and exclusions apply. Please see your plan for full details.

For WA residents, it may not be available in all plans. See your plan details for additional information. Best Co. Plans only available to U. Allianz Travel Insurance products are distributed by Allianz Global Assistance, the licensed producer and administrator of these plans and an affiliate of Jefferson Insurance Company. Plans include insurance benefits and assistance services.

Except as expressly provided under your plan, you are responsible for charges you incur from third parties.

You must be signed in to save your quote. Please sign in to proceed. Your session has expired. Among the benefits in this era of keeping your distance are not shelling out cash at every toll booth and not needing to encounter a person.

If you accept the rental agency's offer to supply a device, it is likely to cost more than you expect. And the tolls show up on your credit card bill one to three weeks after you've returned the vehicle to the rental company. They're often more than you'd think, driving up a seemingly cheap car rental into one that might have you second-guessing yourself.

More than 40 states add excise taxes, daily fees or both onto the usual state sales tax as of August , according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. At least 15 allow local governments to tack on their own charges because lawmakers see it as a tax on tourists, not residents. The total can mean 2 percent to 19 percent more on your bill. Rental companies have upgraded their cleaning , and some are aggressive about it.

Yikes, renting a vehicle sounds like a bad idea or at least stressful , you're thinking. But here are some reasons to think twice before driving your own car:.

Wear and tear. A long road trip could accelerate your need for future repairs, especially if you head out with a vehicle that's between visits to the shop or already has an intermittent problem.

Easy answer: Get service before you set off, even if it throws off your maintenance schedule a bit. Here's one way to measure it: In the IRS allows people to claim deductions of The business figure is supposed to cover the spectrum of costs associated with owning and driving a vehicle. Forget about the business part and just use the You might be able to rent a car for a week for roughly half that, but you'd still have to put gas in the tank.

Lease considerations. In normal times — remember those? But lately because of work-from-home and stay-at-home rules imposed to limit the spread of COVID, few people have logged many miles. You might set the mileage-limit consideration aside this time. You know where it's been. If you decide to rent an RV , think twice. Yes, they can spare you the worry of finding lodging and wondering if it's free of the coronavirus.

But they are big. A novice driver needs time before a trip to become smooth and skilled, especially at backing up. Most campsites require you to park backed in.

They also gulp fuel compared to regular vehicles — 6 to 12 miles a gallon, depending on their size and the terrain you're driving. Those numbers are likely to be a shock unless you normally pull a trailer behind a pickup. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials list touching surfaces as a threat. Gloves can minimize the chances of picking up the germs of thousands of users at gas pumps and doors to heavily trafficked spots such as convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants and rest stops.

Just be sure to dump the gloves and sanitize your hands before you touch your car's door handle to get back in and resume your travel. Note: We are currently in the process of replacing our commenting service, so it may take a few days for previous comments to appear. Login or register on AARP. Toby Russell, the co-CEO of the car-buying site Shift , says he's noticed more consumers want to buy a new vehicle before their summer road trip.

But this summer will be even busier. By then, supplies will be low and prices will be high. Good for car buyers: Chip shortages have disrupted the market for used cars. And then there are RVs. It's a "work from anywhere" travel trailer with room to sleep six and a tech-connected office setup. I may be able to just rent one through a site like RVshare. But many people are waiting until the last minute to book their vacations, which could be a mistake this summer.

And even if you can find an RV to rent, it's difficult to find a place to park it. RVing for the first time? How about rental cars? That's always an option, but this summer it may be an expensive choice. Car rental prices are soaring , thanks to a series of pandemic events.

First, demand dropped, prompting car rental companies to downsize their fleets by selling off cars. Then they couldn't buy replacements because of a microchip shortage that stalled the delivery of new vehicles.

It's not uncommon to hear of car rental rates that are four times the regular price. Until then, Martini and other car rental experts say careful planning can help control your expenses.

The problem, says Weinberg, is that most consumers still tend to book rental cars at the last minute — and they're getting hammered with high prices.