Car rental

A car rental, rent-a-car or car hire agency is a company that rents automobiles for short periods of time (ranging from a few hours to a few weeks) for a fee. It is an elaborate form of a rental shop, organized in numerous local branches, primarily located near airports or busy city areas and often complemented by a website allowing online reservations. There are also third party websites (such as online travel agencies) which compare quotes from the major car rental agencies.

Car rental agencies primarily serve people who have a car that is temporarily out of reach or out of service, for example travellers who are out of town or owners of damaged or destroyed vehicles who are awaiting repair or insurance compensation. Because of the variety of sizes of their vehicles, car rental agencies may also serve the self-moving industry needs, by renting vans or trucks.

Car rentals are subject to many conditions which vary from one brand to another. The vehicle must be returned in a good condition and must not exceed a maximum driven distance, otherwise extra fees may be incurred. Additionally, some companies set up a minimum age for the vehicle driver, which in some cases is as high as 25, even in countries where the minimum legal age to hold a driver's license is much lower. Recent conditions have utilised GPS technology to limit maximum speeds or driving to specific regions.^{[citation needed]} Renewable fuel vehicles are available in certain areas.^[1]

The vast majority of car rental companies require the use of a Credit card to make it easier for them to trace a person after they have stolen a car, or to charge additional fees at will if a defect is later found with the car. The credit card company itself may pay some damages without charging them to the cardholder.

There are two major types of car hire companies. The first group of companies own their own cars (known as a fleet) and may have agreements with car manufacturers to provide all the cars for that fleet. An example of this type of company would be Alamo or Europcar.

The other type of car hire company operate on a broker model and have commercial agreements with car hire companies to provide access to their fleets of cars.

An alternative to the traditional car rental business model is now in embryonic development at pairngo.com. The site at [1] is a community website dedicated to connecting members from around the world who are prepared to swap (pair) their cars for leisure or business trips.

Insurance is not as big a problem as it might first appear as many companies will add an additional driver to a policy at no extra cost. Where this cannot be done there are a number of companies offering very competitive short-term insurance who will insure for swapping purposes. The cost of the additional insurance is generally a fraction of the car rental costs. Members only agree to final pairing when insurance details have been agreed and exchanged via letter, fax or scanned and attached to an email.