I keep hearing that car rentals are expensive and terrible, but it's not at all matched my experience. I just rented a car for last weekend 9/10 - 9/12, and it cost me 95 dollars including taxes and fees for the whole weekend. This seems like an incredible deal, when car rentals are apparently so strained?
It depends on the location. Orlando has plenty of reasonable rates. If you want to pick up a car at Portland, however, not only does a quick search suggest you're 7 or 8 weeks from any availability at all, but it's twice as expensive as a last-minute rental in Orlando.
A colleague that had to visit Seattle recently ended up renting a U-Haul truck out of desperation.
I just checked and economy car in Portland (PDX) from tomorrow for a week is around $1000 total. $150/day is high but a few times I paid that much for rental even before pandemic. October dates are available at around $300/wk.
Clearly there are local shortages but overall it's not a problem to rent a car.
It also depends on which company. The budget rental companies, which I assume Dollar Rent a Car would fall under, are notorious for doing stuff like this pre-pandemic as well.
I picked up and returned at Dulles International Airport outside Washington DC, which was pretty busy. My theory was that maybe the airport had an excess of rental car inventory on that weekend (being the weekend after Labor Day weekend) and that they were happy to get some inventory off the lot even though I was picking up and returning at the same weekend
