Truck Rental Woe

[ultrarunner]

The closing entity is a rural medical clinic… rather remote and no dock or forklift…

The higher the cost the less it makes sense… it’s basically come and get it…

Penske called 12 hours prior to confirmed pickup to cancel… asked for options but nothing local…

Only posted because this marks the third time in 2 years a confirmed rental cancelled on short or no notice.

 

[Snobdds]

Maybe all the one way moves out of state have decimated rental truck inventory…

This was my first thought. I saw a stat where California struggles to have Uhaul inventory due to all the one way traffic out of state. Nobody is using them to haul stuff into California.

 

[ultrarunner]

This was my first thought. I saw a stat where California struggles to have Uhaul inventory due to all the one way traffic out of state. Nobody is using them to haul stuff into California.

The one way out of State prices can be 10x the price of one way to California.
I saw that first hand when a friend moved from SF to Seattle and another moved from Seattle to SF

 

[CliffordK]

Maybe all the one way moves out of state have decimated rental truck inventory…

That may be true, but I had understood that you were doing a round trip, so there would be no one-way element which some companies may prefer.

If there is a surplus of trucks at the origin point, then you could figure out how to do a one-way trip. Rental and fuel may almost be enough that it could pay for a fuel efficient accompany vehicle and second employee.

California does go on Diesel SMOG binges from time to time. Perhaps that is also impacting the rental market. Although the last time I encountered rental liftgate trucks was fall of 2019 doing support for Cycle Oregon. The trucks we got seemed to be very new. Apparently an alarm was programmed into the radio of one of the trucks, and the person driving thought they had killed the truck, so a few hour delay dealing with service to get that straightened out.

 

[ultrarunner]

Exactly and why a local same day lack of availability continues to surprise me…

Can’t really shop options the night before for a 7 am job in the morning.

 

[Quaffer]

Are you in Oakland?

If so, isn't "local" solution to steal a truck for a one-time disposable use?

 

[ultrarunner]

Good Luck with that… most thefts happen in the dark of night parked in a motel parking lot.

I will leave it to admin… if my shift assignment is a field trip for the day in a rental truck it’s ok by me…

 

[Snobdds]

Are you in Oakland?

If so, isn't "local" solution to steal a truck for a one-time disposable use?

 

[dodge man]

I’ll give an example of my personal use of my equipment. We did pavement cores. We rented a core drill, used my generator, my car trailer and my F150. We used a water tank that held something like 500 gallons that he just let us use. I was pretty reasonable on what I charged, it was sort of up to me. I think for the trailer and generator I got like $125 a day and something like $0.40 a mile. Is there a reason they won’t just pay you extra to use your trailer and truck?

 

[Quaffer]

Personal equipment used in a business has all sorts of entanglements.

A friend of mine was employed by a non-profit. He volunteered to use his pickup truck to assist a weekend event for the non-profit entity that employed him. Then he did it many more times, probably every weekend for a few months.

He approached the manager in advance of the next event, and said he didn't want to do it any more. The manager paused, looked at him, and said: "That is really going to put us in a bind!!!"

A ... "bind." No mention of something like .... thank you .... for all the many prior volunteer uses.