You know how it costs extra to rent a car in one place and drop it off in another? And some rental companies and locations don’t allow it at all. Well, I recently found out about another way to make one-way road trips happen, basically for free: become a driver for a car that needs to be relocated.
Rather than ship a car across the country on one of those big trucks, some people opt to have someone drive it for them. It’s like carpooling in that you’re not adding to the number of cars on the road; but you have the privacy and control of having your own car. In the United States, check Auto Driveway for these types of driving opportunities. In Canada, Hit the Road seems to be the major service.
Photo by Vlasta Juricek
You need to have a good driving record and pay a deposit, and the opportunities are limited by the number of driving requests customers make. (Right now there are only three routes listed on Auto Driveway and nine on Hit the Road.) But beyond the pick-up location, the drop-off location and general time and mileage constraints, the vehicle is all yours for the duration of your road trip.
As with any other really good deal, you have to be patient, flexible, or just ridiculously lucky to make this work. Now I’m just crossing my fingers for a car that needs to be transported from Denver to LA this summer—with unlimited mileage and no time limit!