UKC

Hi all,

Looking at a 3 month trip in the states from mid september this year and have come to looking at vehicle access.

Getting loads of conflicting advice from people on the subject of buying vs renting so am reaching out to see if anyone has recent experience they can help me with.
Hiring/Renting seems to be realllly expensive for that amount of time (£4000+) whereas buying seems to be a massive faff with all the paperwork, insurance, breakdown cover and selling it again.

Many thanks in advance for any help you can give me,

Dan

Not me but friends have just returned having bought and then sold a campervan. 

They found someone/a company in Montana (I think) who did a lot of that for them, as it was cheaper to do those things there than other states. They actually bought the van in Florida

They were lucky, and sold privately in Portland for only 5k less than they bought it ( Dealers were offering 21k less) but they were there for 2 years rather than a few months. Personally 4k for three months doesn't sound too bad compared with the stress of buying and selling. 

Look at something like Hertz Multi-month rental program.

Have they got something over there similar to rent a reck or shed ? I was looking at the same thing for New Zealand where routine car hire is really expensive, but managed to find somewhere you could hire a 10 yr old vehicle quite reasonably for

People have had problems doing this due to strict rules, especially on vehicle registration (you need a US address). These pages claim to help (the second being the most important).

https://www.visitorus.com/resources/how-to-buy-a-vehicle-in-the-united-stat...

https://www.visitorus.com/resources/how-to-register-a-vehicle-in-the-united...

A few ways to bring cost down

Hire a van from u haul. Can work out slightly cheaper

Use a third party excess insurance rather than the hire companies own one( this one was about £100 for annual worldwide cover).

like https://www.icarhireinsurance.com/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw4ri0BhAvE...

A quick search in LA for three months, no extras was £2350 for a 5 seat economy car.

Don't know if this is compatible with your trip itinerary, but would it be possible to use public transport (trains/buses) for long parts of the trip and then just hire locally when you need a car?

Trains and buses in the USA???

Some years back a buddy went to the US for a month and bought an unlimited flight pass, he zigzagged across the country choosing the longest possible overnight flights each time to save on hotels. The rest of the time he was on a Greyhound bus but they are kinda rare nowadays. His route on the map was amazing! Frontier Airlines do All-you can fly deals.

Having bought and sold many cars, and rented many times a yr in the US, my advice would be to rent, not buy and sell. Second-hand cars in the US are often poor value for money for the condition they are in, and you could pick up a dog requiring expensive repairs. (Several secondhand cars I bought ended up costing about as much as a new car.) Unfortunately, prices in the US of just about everything have skyrocketed in the last couple of years, so I don't think there is a cheap option.

Would have added planes, but was trying to be greener

The USA has the greatest length of rail tracks of any country. Whether this helps access to climbing destinations is doubtful.

Used cars are very expensive in the US, and if it's a private sale it will be a hassle to register while on vacation in most states. 4000 quid might not get you anything decent from a dealer.

Conversely renting in the US is pretty hassle free and you don't hear the stories of made up fees and bait and switches than you do in Europe. I've rented dozens of cars over the years here and had no issues. (Enterprise would be my choice).

Your choice but if it was me and I was spending money and time to come on vacation I wouldn't want to be wasting that dealing with car ownership.

It might be worth checking what the rental costs are in different locations (ie LA, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City etc.) There are usually quite large regional variations.
I'm doing the reverse trip next week and flights seem pretty cheap right now at least. (Vegas to Heathrow return was $1100).
 

If you're under 25 (as per your profile) then you may find renting from the normal global rental companies difficult. I had this problem when I went to California, none of the companies with desks in San Francisco airport would touch me or my GF as we were 21, luckily one employee knew of a local business that would. One short taxi ride into the depths of a tatty industrial estate resulted in me being the proud 'owner' of a drastically under-powered 1.6l automatic Toyota corolla saloon for a month.

Look for an old beater 70's 80's 90's  barge and scrap /give it away it at the end of the trip. Or buy something a little better and ship it back to the UK and sell for a profit. 

Makes for a real adventure if you don't know when it'll break down.

Friend bought an old hot rod years back, drove cross country to ship it back to the UK. The seat was a beer crate, to give you an idea of the state of the car

Your not kidding, passeneger trains especially in the west are kind of rare (I've never seen one) and you'll want to pretty dedicated. A quick sample Portland Oregon to San Francisco. Train 19hrs and $214, car 10hrs, air 1hr 48min and $38. As the rail line isn't electrified and takes a tortous route I suspect the planè is the clear environmental winner.

Crag access by Public transport is pretty grim, and remember how big the national parks are.

There is one bus a day Yosemite-Touloume Meadows-Mammoth Lakes (i walked the last 4 days of the John Muir) and the Meadows and Yosemite Valley both have free (but unlinked) park buses. Half-dome by the chains needs a pass, half are reserved for thru hikers.

The www says there is a bus four times a week Yosemite to vegas (via Death Valley)

Joshua Tree park, Smiths Rocks, Needles none to my knowledge.

I agree with City of Rocks+Castle Rocks Idaho as a possible destination but that is a long way even from Smiths Rocks.

Dealing with customs and shipping companies is way better than climbing splitter cracks under perfect blue skies. 

I used to work for a company that did import customs clearance. Maybe half a dozen times a year we'd get a customer who'd bought something abroad and tried to ship it back to the UK. Almost without fail it turned into an expensive ball ache.

My neighbour does it regularly, plenty of company's who will do all paperwork etc for you. 

Well it all sounds much more fun than climbing. After all, how many big trips does one do in a lifetime? Not that many. Best to spend them in some quasi-commercial enterprise rather than actually cragging in amazing places. 

It might pay for another trip. 

But if climbing is your only thing, then yeah it would be a waste, and if you look at the op's other post, climbing isn't the only objective 

Investigate U-Haul. A van will allow you to sleep in it. This maybe cheaper than renting a car. Buy car insurance in the UK to cover period. ChatGPT states that drivers aged 21-24 may face additional costs and restrictions. 

Many thanks for all the info everyone! Still seems many people are split on this but I've decided to hire and go high cost/low faff.

Stay psyched everyone, I know I am!!

You can't buy UK insurance to cover the excess on UHaul because they are vans rather than cars. (Or at least you couldn't when I did quite a bit of research a year or two ago).

Last time I was in Canada I hired through a commercial business leasing company and it worked out way cheaper, that's another option to look at (ford truck at £20 a day). This option works with the UK insurance because it was hire for a car rather than a van.

Have you tried Happy Tours Car Rental?

I've found them to be significantly cheaper in the past?

https://www.happytoursusa.com/en?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwqMO0BhA8Eiw...

I would get an "SUV" - 2WD will be adequate, for the ground clearance. What the americans consider a 2WD drive dirt road will still have quite large bumps (some of solid rock). 

i.e.

In JT the road to Keyes Ranch (booked tour) is a single track dirt, depends when it was last plowed flat.

Take in Indian Cove, not sure who maintains the dirt there, it was very rocky when I was last there

State Route UT261 (a possible Moab to Monument Valley). Mostly tarmac, but the very steep hill is dirt!

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.2714088,-109.936789,3a,75y,240.11h,90t/data...

If you're going down Moki Dugway it's well worth the side trip out to Muley Point, turn off just before the tarmac ends. Again it's dirt road but well graded. A magnificent view across to Monument Valley and we had it to ourselves.

U-haul charges by the mile as well as a daily rate so probably not cheaper give OPs itinerary!

Been given some beta on hiring via Turo, basically an AirBnb for car leasing.

Seems very cheap comparatively and I can get exactly what I’m after for the terrain I’m gonna drive on. Just need to do some research on the insurance complications of hiring a persons vehicle rather than through a professional hire car company.

Thanks for all the suggestions folks.
They’ve been invaluable and I’m sure will help a few people in the future planning similar trips who search this forum too 🤙🏻

Its the best view of Monument Valley I know of, without the crowds you get in the Indian lands - take some binos.

Indian Cove - I meant Indian Creek.

Indian Cove in JT is mostly a campsite so well graded.

Not sure how relevant this is to the US, but a mate and I did a month in Canada a few summers ago, off the back of a month he'd done with his missus. We bought a Ford Explorer and sold it 2 ml this later for about 1000Cad less thst we paid, so songofocnalty less than any hiring options evening counting insurance etc. We had a contact address in Canada which helped. Was a bit stressy the last week in Squamish getting it sold, but in the end another German climber on a long trip bought it. 

If you are travelling alone and you’re just going climbing the whole time then it is easy to get away with not having a car. If you get the bus to yosemite you will meet lots of other climbers who are on extended trips like yourself, many of whom are on a very tight budget and would be willing to give you a ride to the next climbing spot for a bit of fuel money. In America they insure the car (not the driver) so they may also appreciate you driving some of the way on a long journey. 
In a lot of the National parks there is a free bus service, and is actually easier to stay in Yosemite for long periods of time without a car.  
Basically, go to camp 4 in Yosemite and talk to people/check the notice board and you’ll work it out!

fly to san fran. It’s easiest to get the bus from here, and if you end up at Indian creek at the end of your trip, there is a train from green river to san fran if you can’t find a ride back.