Quick POLL: UHAUL or PENSKE?

[Trygve]

About two months ago, a friend of mine called UHaul and reserved a truck for the weekend. She got a few guys to help with the move (including me) and she showed up at the UHaul facility on Saturday morning when it was time to pick up the truck. After looking it over, recording the existing damage on it, and filling out the paperwork, the guy at the counter said she had to have it back in six hours. She said she'd reserved it for the weekend, he said they were renting it to someone else that afternoon and it wouldn't be fair to that person if they let her have it. She said that she really needed a truck for both Saturday and Sunday, as she'd reserved, even if it was a different size or if she had to get it from a different location. The guy behind the counter told her to get out of the store or he would call the police.

Perhaps this shouldn't reflect on UHaul in general, but it made a poor impression on me nonetheless.

The biggest problem was that the other guys who were helping out had been told to meet her at the UHaul facility and hadn't gotten there yet. Once that got straightened out, she found the nearest Penske (only a few blocks away), rented a truck from them for the weekend, and had no problems.

 

[jlee]

Penske is awesome...we moved from NH to FL with them. The truck was in great shape. I hear horror stories about UHaul..their trucks usually are in crappy condition..and Penske looks cooler. 😛

 

[bunker]

Originally posted by: Eli
Penske..

U-Haul = Ford.

'Nuff said.

Every uhaul I've ever rented has either been a Chevy or a Toyota. And that was when I lived in Michigan.

Look at the big 'ol GMC emblem in the grill

 

[FoBoT]

i rented a 20 ft penske to move from upstate NY to Atlanta (~1000 miles) in '00

no problems at all, it was about $6-700

 

[Demon-Xanth]

U Haul has crappy trucks that rarely work 100%.

 

[optoman]

Originally posted by: aeroguy

Originally posted by: HotChic
Darn you guys, couldn't have posted this thread BEFORE I reserved a truck for August from Uhaul, could you? 🙂 I never thought to ask. Hm. Think I could cancel my reservation, no cost? It's about 1/4 of my current bank account going into this moving, so cancelation fees would be a bad thing.

Ya, as long as it's far enough in advance, I don't think they'll charge you. Just ask them. Also, if Penske is WAY higher, it might be worth the risk to use UHAUL.

Edit: HotChic are you really hot or are you just saying that?

You can still cancel and they shouldn't charge you. Before you cancel, use the quote from U-haul when you reserve the Penske truck. Penske will match the price if theirs is higher than u-haul.

Penske has never given me any problems and they have even bailed me out a couple of times when Ryder and U-Haul couldn't get me a truck.

 

[Lucky]

Neither. Ryder/Budget.


As for uhaul....I used it once, for moving out of a college dorm room to my own house at the end of the school year. I reserved a 10 (?) foot truck (the smallest) because that's all I really needed. Go down to uhaul and I find out they gave my truck to someone else and all they had left was....a 27-FOOTER! You try manuevering a 27-foot uhaul in and around a college campus. Its HARD.

 

[optoman]

Just so you know, Ryder is now Budget.

Ryder sucks because I had resevered a truck about 2 months before the move and called about a week before the date to confirm there would be a truck there. They said sure. I got a call the day before saying that there wasn't a truck to be had within 300 miles. He then told me I was the first person on a list of about 10 he had to call. WTF.

Called Penske and they found me a truck about 70 miles away. She was awesome and spent about an hour on the phone with me as she looked everywhere to find me a truck. I complained to Ryder and they told me to shove it.

 

[Lucky]

I said ryder/budget because many of the trucks still say ryder. FWIW I've never had a bad experience with them and have for the most part heard the same from other folks.