On renting a rugged vehicle

Hello Everyone,

One of the main benefits of capitalism is that competition, while seemingly chaotic and inefficient, mirrors the natural evolutionary process. If a business offers a better product or service, they will thrive. Ideally, other businesses will seek to then improve their offerings and everyone wins. In most retail situations, this largely holds true. My brewery is doing well because we offer better beer than our mainstream competitors.

I used to think the rental car market fit this description. I've rented lots of cars and vans, and when I had bad service from one company, I just went to another. No problem.

Recently though, as I tried to rent a vehicle for the trip to Moab, I discovered that the rental car industry is primed for the kind of paradigm shift the dinosaurs felt when an asteroid landed in Mexico and changed their views of the benefits of being cold-blooded.

You see, I need either a truck with a crew cab or an SUV with a trailer hitch as we'll be transporting five men and five bikes. These aren't rare, unicorn-type vehicles, how hard can this be? Way, way harder than it should have been, as it turns out. First. none of the major companies' websites would specify whether their pick ups were full crew cabs or just extended cabs, nor did they have an option for a hitch on their SUVs.

No problem, I'll just call them and talk with a real live person and sort it out. One of the ways they apparently save money is to use a crappy skype connection rather than a phone line, resulting in the first price quoted to me being $27,000. She thought I wanted the truck from April to March, not April to May. Who would pay so much for a rental, ever?

What's more, everyone you talk to is just in some central office. Trying to find the number of an actual rental desk in your destination city is like playing hide and seek on the internet. All the central office people can do is look up the company website for you and enter your information. You know, in case you have a phone, but not a computer. Or access to a computer. Thanks guys.

Finally though, I found the meteorite I was looking for: a company that only rents rugged vehicles. So much so, they are called Rugged Rentals. Which is additionally fitting, because they have won the business from five ruggedly handsome customers.

wes