Hire car advice

[Maz]

Thanks for the latest suggestions


I think you'll find that doing that effectively makes the vehicle both taller and wider so it would have taken out the building as well as the gateway!

Interesting point about mileage. I had naively assumed that we just had to replace any fuel used! We will probably need to do about 800 miles, certainly no more than 1,000. Is that likely to be a problem?

Double-checking the fuel type is something I'm definitely going to do! My friend is bright, but easily distracted ...

Ah, I thought the van just had to get over a small gate to get into a yard.

I think most car hire is unlimited mileage (long time since i last hired one, so i'm not sure), but worth checking.

 

[ColinJ]

If hiring cars often you can cover the excess on the CDW yourself by using a 3rd party firm such as insurance4carhire.co.uk for about 40quid. or a bit more if you're going worldwide.
A large estate car will have a fairly large excess - probably about 600 quid but dependent on where you hire can be >1000 euros.
A van should be cheaper.
Remember to give the vehicle a good going over and if a mark isn't noted on the paperwork, to go back to the desk straight away.
Also car hire firms getting finickity about things like dirt/dust/sand in the car..,.just with the mtbs in there, they may think 60-80 quid for a full valet.

We were just about to sign up with them when we noticed a killer clause in the 'small print' - the insurance is only valid if the hiring is done more than 150 km from home! Cheeky buggers - we are getting a van from about 10 km away so we wouldn't have been covered.

Incidentally - we decided to cut the trip by one day to get the van back on the Saturday and we got Sat-Sat rental of a Ford Connect for £150 - not bad!

 

[User482]

Colin, one more thing. Unless you've hired a car-derived van, the national speed limit on single carriageways is 50 and not 60mph.

More here: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/speedmanagement/vanspeedlimits


Easy to forget if you're used to driving a car...

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Colin, one more thing. Unless you've hired a car-derived van, the national speed limit on single carriageways is 50 and not 60mph.

More here: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/speedmanagement/vanspeedlimits


Easy to forget if you're used to driving a car...

I'd never heard of that before, wonder if the van drivers have!

 

[Archie_tect]

Thankfully speed cameras can't tell the difference [but the Polis can... if they can be bothered, and if they know their Highway Code]

 

[ColinJ]

Colin, one more thing. Unless you've hired a car-derived van, the national speed limit on single carriageways is 50 and not 60mph.

More here: http://www.dft.gov.u.../vanspeedlimits

Easy to forget if you're used to driving a car...

Thanks - neither of us was aware of that law. I'm pretty sure from a couple of quick searches that the Ford Transit Connect is classed as a van because its maximum laden weight is over 2 tonnes.

So it is 50 mph (or less) on single carriageways, 60 mph (or less) on dual carriageways and 70 mph on motorways?

 

[soulful dog]

Have you tried adding water?

I'm not quite that daft!


As for the speed limit, as long as it's a white van you get, like taxis, they have different rules....

 

[ColinJ]

(I've moved the question that was here to a new thread.)

 

[ColinJ]

I'm back!

The Ford Transit Connect van that we hired turned out to be ideal for our purposes. The bikes fitted in without taking wheels off and a couple of bungee cords held them in place. There was plenty of room for the rest of our stuff. I put up with the 13.5 kg dog on my lap for about 75 miles but then he had to make do with his giant bean bag bed in the back of the van. The hire company had lined the rear of the van with plywood so we didn't have to worry about scratching anything. There was a little door panel through to the front of the van and the dog spent about half of each journey peering through that over my left shoulder and occasionally licking my ear! We did 700 miles on about £120 worth of diesel.

 

[potsy]

Welcome back Colin.
At least you'll have a very clean ear now then, better than a cat licking you, they have very rough tongues it's like being rubbed with wet sandpaper

 

[pawl]

If available for hire a Citroen Berlingo or Citroen Zara Piccaso Diesal models very economical.Rear seats fold flat to give plety of load space.Ihave owned both of these models in the past.

 

[ColinJ]

If available for hire a Citroen Berlingo or Citroen Zara Piccaso Diesal models very economical.Rear seats fold flat to give plety of load space.Ihave owned both of these models in the past.

Local rider tubbycyclist has a Berlingo and has given me a lift a few times. We found that we had to put the bikes in diagonally to get them to fit with the wheels on.

I though the Connect was an ideal size. My mountain bike is pretty big but it fitted with about 3 inches to spare to the back door of the van. The side door was very handy. The van we hired had no rear windows so would-be thieves wouldn't know what was inside. It seemed nippy enough to get past slow-moving vehicles quickly. The only criticism the driver had was the lack of an interior mirror so reversing was trickier than it otherwise might have been.

If I was a driver, I'd buy a vehicle like that which is ideal for 2 rides and their bikes, but also for one rider, one bike, a rucksack and a small mattress for cheap weekends away.