John Cletheroe's
USA and Canada Holiday Hints

Car Rental in the USA and Canada - Alternatives to Car Rental

This page briefly discusses some alternatives to hiring a car for people visiting the USA and/or Canada from Britain.

Coach Tours

A coach tour has the advantages of everything being organised and done for you, but the very considerable disadvantages of being far less flexible and independent. I have often met people on coach tours who would have liked to have stayed longer at the National Parks etc. Many coach tours spend what I would regard as an undesirably large amount of time in large cities. A coach tour is also usually a much more expensive option than renting a car and staying in independent and budget motels.

Driveaway Cars

 When a person or family relocates to another part of the USA or Canada then due to the potentially very long distances involved they often fly rather than drive, raising the problem of transporting their car to their new home. The driveaway car system is one solution to this problem. A driveaway car company matches required car movements to drivers willing to take them.

As a driver, you normally have use of the car at no charge but you must pay your own petrol, accommodation and other expenses, and you must agree to not deviate from the direct route to any great extent and to transport the car without any unreasonable delays. You may also be very restricted as regards the amount of baggage that you can take. Also, I imagine that in most cases no passengers can be carried, although sometimes a relief driver is permitted. The driveaway car company might possibly make a payment to the driver.

For visitors to the USA and Canada from other countries many of the complications noted in the later section of this page with regard to insurance and the purchasing and later selling a car naturally also apply to the driveaway car system. Normal car rental will normally be a far preferable option, except possibly for single people on a very tight budget.

External Links - Driveaway Car Companies In The USA And Canada

Driving A Friend's Or Relative's Car

If you are visiting a friend or relative in the USA or Canada from abroad, check the insurance cover before accepting an offer to drive their car. Your car insurance in your home country is very unlikely to cover you for driving in the USA or Canada, so you need to make certain that the car owner's insurance will cover you.

Hire An RV (a Recreational Vehicle, i.e. a motorhome)

See separate article for a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of RV's.

Hitch Hiking

Don't even consider hitch hiking. As well as being extremely dangerous it is also illegal throughout the USA and Canada, with severe penalties. According to the Illinois Driver's Manual "Rules Of The Road" hitch hikers may be fined up to $1000 and given a jail sentence of up to one year.

Importing A Vehicle

Although it may initially appear an attractive option for anyone making an extended visit, apart from between Canada and the USA importing a vehicle from another country is likely to be an expensive and very complicated affair. The cost may well exceed the value of the vehicle. As well as arranging for the actual shipping of the vehicle, you would also probably need to consider most of the following factors:

Long Distance Bus Lines

The two best known long distance bus lines are Greyhound and Trailways. These long distance bus services tend to only run on the Interstate Highways between large cities and their routes do not include the National Parks. Bus depots are often located in the centres of cities in unpleasant and possibly unsafe areas.

External Link - Greyhound Bus Lines Checked Apr-97.

External Link - Crystal Holidays (UK agents for Greyhound Bus Lines) Includes full details of the Greyhound Ameripass and Canada Coach Pass available in the UK, and links to the US Greyhound site for routes and schedules. Checked Oct-99.

External Link - Trailways In the past Trailways was a long distance bus line, or more accurately an association of long distance bus lines. The information on their web site is far from clear, but it appears that the scale of their operation has reduced drastically in recent years and is perhaps now restricted to charters and tours with no scheduled services. When I visited this web site in August 1999 I could not find any information about schedules, timetables or fares. Nor could I find any links to web sites of members of the Trailways association where such information might be found. As far as I can discover the name "Continental Trailways" referred to one previous member of the Trailways association and no longer exists. Checked Aug-99.

Purchase A Car

While it is possible to purchase a car at the start of your holiday, use it to tour round and then sell it at the end of the holiday, this has numerous disadvantages and complexities for a visitor to the USA or Canada from another country.

You would need transport before you purchase the car and after you sell it. Obtaining car insurance could be almost impossible with no permanent address in the USA or Canada and the cost of car insurance could well cancel out any savings. You almost certainly would not be able to use any car insurance you held in your home country to drive in the USA or Canada.

You might not be able to sell the car quickly at a reasonable price. If you would be selling the car in a different state to where it was purchased then you might run foul of the different exhaust emission regulations in different states (selling a car in California which was purchased in another state can be a particular problem in this regard I believe).

Not having a permanent address in the USA or Canada may make it difficult or impossible to obtain insurance or a vehicle licence.

However, if you are embarking on an extended trip and will be staying with friends or relations at the start and end then it might be worth exploring purchasing a car as a possibility. I would highly advise getting some expert advice before committing yourself to this idea though.

Rail Travel

Rail travel in the USA is generally portrayed as being an unreliable and unpleasant experience but I have no personal experience and this image may be quite incorrect. Also I have no knowledge of how prices compare with other forms of transport.

In contrast to the previous paragraph, Mike Gayler sent me these comments regarding journeys he took by Amtrak from New York to Chicago and Chicago to Dallas:

I found the services very, very comfortable, a great way to meet people, and appreciate the scenery, and really quite an economical way of covering long distances (particularly if you are averse to air travel) - beats the bus anyday!
Rail travel has similar drawbacks to the long distance bus lines with regard to being limited to routes between major towns and cities and being dropped in the middle of towns.

External Links - US and Canadian Railway Web Sites

Stay In One Place

Staying in one place may appeal to some visitors, but you need to think about transport even within that area. A holiday to the theme parks in Orlando, Florida, to Las Vegas or to a large city are the obvious possibilities here. I cannot see much point in taking a long haul flight and then staying in a hotel and on the beach the entire time.

Truck Rental

Yet another intriguing possibility for a long distance one-way trip, especially if cost is more important than comfort, is to investigate what the truck rental companies such as Ryder and U-Haul can offer in the way of pickup trucks and passenger vans.

For suitably qualified drivers there are also driveaway truck companies, offering a similar arrangement as for driveaway cars but with trucks.

Conclusion

Having considered all the possibilities, I feel that renting a car is by far the best way of seeing America and Canada, unless you are staying for an extended period.

It is probably best to accept the full cost of renting a car, including CDW/LDW, top-up insurance and sales tax, as an inevitable part of the cost of the holiday rather than to waste time exploring rather less satisfactory and in some cases very complicated alternatives.

Car Rental

Public Transport

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As with all the other pages on this personal web site, all the information on this page is solely the opinion of the author, who has no connection whatsoever with any of the companies and organisations mentioned other than as an actual or potential customer.
About this personal web site JohnCletheroe

EMail me Please note that I am not in the car rental business or the travel trade and I cannot provide any more information on car rental other than that presented here. Nor can I process any requests for quotations or reservations for car rental - these should be directed to car rental companies or travel agents.

Most recently modified 11-Mar-03