On the Road

We found this insightful article posted in The Wichita Eagle…..

Every time I’ve read or written about the rental of recreational vehicles (like a Winnebago), the resulting article has been about the several nationwide companies that rent them. Frankly, the possibility of renting one directly from a private owner had never occurred to me.

And yet the reasons for doing so are often identical to the advantages of renting a vacation home or apartment directly from an owner: eliminating a middleman, saving the cost of commissions and receiving a vacation product that can sometimes be better furnished or maintained than one rented out by a broker.

Recently, my daughter Pauline and her family (her husband and two daughters, 6 and 10), returned from a successful one-week trip to the Grand Canyon and other parts of Arizona, which was accomplished by flying to Phoenix and there picking up a 32-foot Winnebago rented directly from a local resident. Like numerous other Arizonans, the owner had a Winnebago that she uses for several weeks in the summer only. Therefore, she was delighted to rent it to people, making use of the same vehicle in autumn, winter and spring — at charges much lower than a standard rental company for recreational vehicles would charge. For that Arizonan, the rental charge was found money.

She offered her Winnebago for rental on Owner’s Rental (www.ownersrental.com), a Web site devoted solely to RV rentals in Arizona. If you go to Google and enter the words “rental of recreational vehicles,” you’ll discover many such Web sites for other states as well, all offering rentals of RVs owned by individuals living in those particular states, most of them in the West. The ownersrental.com Web site consists, in part, of dozens of one-paragraph ads placed by residents of different cities in Arizona. Make the choice, fly to that city, pick up your RV, and off you go.

In addition to paying less than the charges of a major, nationwide RV rental firm, Pauline and her husband figured they would be receiving an RV equipped with far more useful accessories than normally would be provided on a standard rental. In actual fact, the 32-foot Winnebago had a grill that they could place outside the vehicle for evening barbecues, a TV and VCR, a number of fine folding chairs, and lots of pots and pans as well as all the other utensils they’d need for a week of preparing meals. The vehicle was beautifully maintained and yet exceedingly reasonable in rental cost.

The owner met them with the vehicle at the Phoenix airport and instructed them in its use. The total cost of the RV for a week of touring Arizona (Grand Canyon, Sedona, Jerome and Phoenix) –the vehicle itself, all gasoline, all charges of the RV parks at which they stayed at night, all groceries for their meals, insurance for the week (independently purchased by them), two restaurant dinners, rentals of DVDs for the kids and ingredients for several campfires, at which s’mores were prepared for their own and visiting children — was $253 per day, total, for the four of them.

They could have spent much less, had they rented a smaller Winnebago or other brand of RV, or if they had bargained more fiercely over the price.

For the same reason so many smart vacationers go to Vacation Rental by Owner (www.vrbo.com) to rent a vacation home or apartment, it might be wise to go directly to an RV owner in renting a vacation vehicle.