I Had To Rent Big Trucks For A Year And It Sucked, Now I Can’t Wait To Own A Truck Again

For years, I’ve always had a tow vehicle ready to use at a moment’s notice. If I wanted to pick up a non-running motorcycle or a sunroof cassette for a project car I never had to think about how my loot was getting home. But last year, I sold all of my work vehicles and tried to get by just renting and borrowing trucks. It sucked so much that I can’t wait until I can put a big burly truck in my fleet again.

The pickup truck, especially the modern truck, can be a bit of a controversial figure in the car enthusiast world. Automakers are now producing trucks so ridiculously tall that they should be classified as high-rise buildings. I’m talking hoods perched so high up and sitting so far forward that it’s wise to pop on a front camera to make sure your neighbor’s cat isn’t in your massive blind spot. The bed rails and tailgate heights are also getting comically high.

Last year, I got a Ford Super Duty F-250 Power Stroke as a press loaner and honestly, it was one of the coolest modern trucks I’ve driven. But what wasn’t great was not being able to close the hood without a stool and having to use a tailgate ladder to get into the bed. Trucks are now status symbols, too, so folks who never need to use a truck for truck things are buying them as daily drivers. I don’t have a problem with the vehicle you choose to drive. But I do get why some car enthusiasts, even some in our own little community, aren’t exactly fired up about the latest Ferd F-Teenthousand.

Toward the end of 2024, I took a lesson from the great Stephen Walter Gossin about my fleet and decided to sell off everything I owned that wasn’t a dream car. Unfortunately, this meant that I sold off almost every vehicle I owned with a tow hitch. I still have a Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI, but not only does that have a low hitch weight limit, but I’m not sure I want to tempt making that complicated beast do any real work. Last year, I didn’t buy another truck or van to make up for the hole in my fleet.

Instead, I did the alternative that some enthusiasts suggested and borrowed or rented a truck every time I wanted to do truck stuff. There’s an idea out there that most people should just rent a truck when they need it. This will be cheaper than owning a truck and won’t force you to keep, daily, or maintain something with the footprint of a tank. It sounds like the best of both worlds and I was excited to try it out.

Here are a couple of our readers supporting this idea, starting with Curtis Loew on Jason’s communal truck idea:

Uhaul is easier and cheaper. I just checked my records and I did 5 trailer rentals and 3 truck rentals in the last year. My total cost was $330. I know I would spend more than that on buying, insuring and maintaining a share of some old junker truck. If you do the process online in advance you walk in the door and they hand you a key. They also have an app where you don’t even need to speak to a human to pick up or drop off.

Martin Ibert agrees:

If you really need it only three times a year, can’t you simply rent one? I mean sure, your community idea might work in some places, and it obviously kind of does already, but in many places, I’d imagine just going for a rented one is going to be easier.
I have rented a pickup every single time I needed one. Or rather, I would rent one if I ever needed one. I did rent a little truck (not a pickup) when moving together with my then-girlfriend in 1993. I have not needed a truck since then. (You can have big-arse TVs and home appliances delivered …)

Plus Nicholas Nolan commenting on a Shitbox Showdown:

I picked the Vibe against type, just because the Honda owner “needed a truck.” You don’t need a truck. No one needs a truck. And when you do need a truck, Home Depot will give you one for $20 for the day you need it. Fight me.

To be clear, I’m not picking on these readers. They’re just examples that the sentiment is there!

My Mom Comes In Clutch

For more than a year, I borrowed trucks about half of the time and rented about the other half. What dictated whether I rented or borrowed hinged entirely on whether my mom’s 2015 GMC Yukon XL Denali or my dad’s 2016 Ford Super Duty F-350 were available for me to use.

My parents live about 20 minutes away from me, so this wasn’t a huge deal. Admittedly, I also didn’t keep receipts of anything because I never thought I’d be writing about this experience.

I technically started this journey in the summer of 2023, when I wanted to get the family camper to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. My Touareg VR6 was undersized for the job, so I needed a truck that I could borrow for a whole week without getting hosed on rental costs. Thankfully, Toyota’s PR people came to the rescue with a Tundra TRD Pro for me to use for the event.

Next came December when I wanted to buy a Suzuki RE-5 as a Christmas present to myself. My Volkswagen Touareg VR6 was injured from off-roading, so I asked my mom if I could borrow what was then her 2011 Chevy Suburban 1500 to use as a tow vehicle. She had no problems loaning it to me and I drove straight to U-Haul, rented a motorcycle trailer, picked up the Suzuki, and had an overall great time.

I remember spending about $50 in total to drive from my spot at the northern Illinois border to Milwaukee where I found the bike. That included fuel for the ‘Burban and the fee for the trailer. Things went so smoothly that I thought I could get used to not owning a big truck, SUV, or van.

I would ask for my mom’s SUV a couple of more times in early 2024 and generally, I found things not to be the most convenient, but I was able to make it work.

By this, I mean I had to coordinate with my mom to make sure someone was going to be at home when I came for her Yukon or for my dad’s Super Duty. I also had to make sure that either vehicle was legal to drive and not broken. Sadly, the Yukon spent much of 2024 in the shop having a bit of everything fixed. The SUV managed to nuke its rear differential, high-pressure fuel pump, driveshaft, powered running boards, and some other seriously pricy bits.

Unfortunately, the unreliability of the Yukon and the unavailability of my dad’s Super Duty meant that I had to get acquainted with rentals.

Renting Is Cheaper Than Owning, But…

My first need for a rental was really stupid. The owner of the storage facility where I parked my U-Haul CT13 camper wanted to knock down a barn. However, my camper was parked next to that barn, so that wasn’t going to work. The owner of the facility assigned me a new spot about 75 feet or so away from what was its position.

By this time I sold off every vehicle I had with a tow hitch. The U-Haul is also just a touch too heavy to move by hand. Great. My parents told me the Super Duty was in the shop and the Yukon had a cracked alloy wheel and was unsafe to drive. Yikes.

I don’t really have friends nearby with trucks, either, so my next option was renting. I could have gotten a truck from Home Depot. These have unlimited mileage for just $19. But the catch is that it’s $19 for 75 minutes. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. The daily rate was $129, and I’m not paying $129 to move a trailer 75 feet.

You could also rent trucks from places like Enterprise or from local ma-and-pop rental outfits, but all of them are a bit spendy to do such a little job. That meant going back to my old friend, U-Haul. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of U-Haul, but the company’s trucks get expensive fast if your local job has you driving a decent number of miles.

Luckily, there’s a U-Haul Neighborhood Dealer right down the street from the place where I stored my CT13. These rental locations are not U-Haul facilities, but car repair shops, storage facilities, or convenience stores that do U-Haul rentals as a side thing. In my experience, the U-Haul Neighborhood Dealers are hit-and-miss. You never know if the truck you’ll be driving has a smoked wheel bearing and bald tires or the shop won’t be open at all, even if U-Haul says it should be open.

In my case, I found a $20 truck at a convenience store down the street from my CT13. Perfect, except for the fact that the cashier at the convenience store told me that only the store’s owner can do U-Haul transactions. Technically, the truck was available for U-Haul’s nifty U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 program which allows you to rent a truck entirely by phone. How it works is that you rent the truck on your phone and you get sent a code to open a lockbox with the truck’s key. On that day, the code didn’t unlock the box and nobody at U-Haul or the convenience store could help me. Sweet.

My next options were a Home Depot 17 miles and a 30-minute drive away or another U-Haul place 11 miles and a 17-minute away. I chose the U-Haul place. Upon arrival, the U-Haul “BP” pickup truck rental wasn’t there, which was a bummer, but there was a 10-foot cube truck “TM” on hand for the same $19.95. Fine, that’ll do.

I got the truck, drove 11 miles to the trailer, moved it 75 feet, and drove the truck 11 miles back to the U-Haul place. When all was said and done I burned about $52 in U-Haul fees and gas to move a trailer 75 feet. An often-circulated meme jokes about people moving an entire mobile home for $20 using a U-Haul, but the truth is that U-Haul makes you pay a dollar per mile in the small trucks and vans. Plus, you have to return the truck with as much fuel as you got it.

People also don’t talk about the time investment. I burned well over an hour of time renting the truck, signing paperwork, getting through a gate, and just driving the truck to the trailer and back to the U-Haul place. I then still had to drive back home from the U-Haul dealer. In the past when I had my own tow vehicle, I was able to move the CT13 and get back home in about an hour and a half, but the whole operation of moving a trailer about 75 feet took me close to three hours.

Frustration Sets In

The biggest car rescue I’ve ever done thus far was picking up the 1948 Plymouth Special DeLuxe from a guy with one of the coolest backstories I’ve ever heard. My original plan for this trip involved borrowing my mom’s Yukon or my dad’s Super Duty. Then, both of them flatlined and ended up in the shop simultaneously.

I then thought about flying out to Wilmington, North Carolina where Stephen Walter Gossin is and just doing a one-way truck and trailer rental back home. The quotes I got for that were well over $1,000.

Thankfully, the wonderful folks of Ford’s PR team came in to save the day by loaning me a Ford Super Duty F-250 Power Stroke to use for EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2024 and to drive down to North Carolina. The whole planning process was seriously stressful. At times I was thinking I had to cancel one or both trips because I had no way to tow the family camper and no way to tow the Plymouth home. But I managed to get through my biggest auto challenge of the year without having my own truck.

Late last year, the folks of BRP loaned me a Can-Am Maverick R X RS side-by-side. I planned on buying a Ford E-350 Power Stroke van, but that fell through when I unexpectedly had to dump $7,000 into fixing my messed-up teeth. So, I went back to borrowing and renting.

This was the proverbial last straw.

First, I had to pick up the Maverick, which meant driving to my parents’ house and borrowing the Yukon. I then drove to the dealership, picked up the Maverick, and hauled it back to my lot. But I couldn’t just go back home. I had to drive back to my parents’ place and then get back into my own car before heading home. When all was said and done I burned a whole three hours once again.

This process rinsed and repeated every time I wanted to take the Maverick out and then when I had to return the Maverick to the dealer. Sadly, borrowing and renting trucks became such a hassle that I was happy to give the Maverick back just so I didn’t have to go through the whole process of borrowing or renting again. This was the first time I ever wanted to give a loaner back.

Time To Add To The Fleet

So, I’m back to the idea I’ve heard from several enthusiasts. That idea is that you’re better off renting a truck when you need it as opposed to owning one.

My biggest gripe really just revolved around time. I burned so much time and gas driving to and from U-Haul stores and to and from my parents’ house. Normally, it might take an hour and a half to go to my storage plot, move a vehicle, and then drive back home. But needing to divert to either U-Haul or to my parents’ place first easily doubles the time. Mind you, I live only minutes from both my parents and U-Haul.

Yet, there was still good news. I didn’t have to buy a truck, maintain it, or insure it. I saved a bunch of money doing this borrowing and renting thing.  So, I do think the suggestion of renting and borrowing rather than owning can work. However, it seems this works best for the kinds of people who do “truck stuff” only a couple of times a year. It feels like the moment you need to haul or tow with any regularity, begging someone for their truck gets old quickly. Maybe Jason’s community truck idea is the right way around that.

In the end, I can’t wait to buy another big work vehicle. What can I say, I like big trucks and I cannot lie. After I’m done spending tens of thousands on my teeth, I want something like a Chevrolet Express 3500 with a Duramax or a Ford E-350 with a Power Stroke. David Tracy has also been showing me some sweet pickups and it’s been taking some real energy to prevent myself from buying during my healing time right now.

I enjoyed doing this sort of unintentional experiment. If you have a truck and you think you might not need it, try renting or borrowing. Maybe you’ll find that you’ll save a ton of cash. Just consider where you’ll be getting your truck because you might end up turning small jobs into things that take up your whole day. As for me, I’m going to drool over some diesels now.

Photos by Mercedes Streeter; top graphic inset image via U-Haul.