Every once in a while, you’re going to need a truck-shaped vehicle that you do not own. Maybe you need to move some furniture or perhaps you just bought that sweet rotary motorcycle you’ve been dreaming about. Whatever the reason, America is full of companies willing to rent you a truck with relatively few questions asked. Once you have that truck, you can basically haul whatever you want so long as the truck comes back in one piece. What’s the weirdest reason you’ve rented a U-Haul or similar rental truck?
My family used to move a lot. For a stretch of a little over a decade, we used to move at least once a year, every year. We were always too cheap to hire professional movers — look, cheapskate-ry runs in the family — so we always rented U-Haul trucks. Growing up, I got to ride in a surprising variation of U-Hauls from old Internationals with diesel engines, manual transmission, and a air suspension-based deck height lowering system, to reliable steeds like the GMC C6500. Sometimes we rented with more local outfits and ended up with trucks with liftgates or vintage Ford F700s.
But none of those trips were weird. That wouldn’t happen until 2017. Back then, I needed to move out of my apartment and do so on an impossibly tight budget. Now, I could have just rented a truck, but I slapped a trailer onto the back of my 2012 Smart Fortwo and moved an entire apartment.
To this day I remember the U-Haul people watching me drive away with their mouths on the ground. Though, they shouldn’t have been too surprised since I rented from the same U-Haul store that installed the hitch a few years prior.
Towing a trailer with my Smart was so fun that I sometimes rented trailers just for the fun of it. See this picture? Yeah, there was nothing in the trailer. I rented it just because I wanted to tow a trailer around.
In this shot, I was towing another empty trailer. I brought it to a regional Smart car meet just for the laughs.
For a while I was on a first name basis with my local U-Haul outfits and half the time I wasn’t even hauling anything in the trailers I rented. The other times I was using my Smart like a pickup truck, so the trailer would have a washer and dryer in it or the contents of parts of my brother’s house. Or, I’d rent the motorcycle trailer and use my car to pick up the countless motorcycle projects I had in the late 2010s.
Perhaps my weirdest U-Haul rental happened recently. Last week, I wrote about how I spent over a year renting trucks and now I want to buy a truck again. Well, one of the problems I had was moving a trailer just 75 feet. The trailer was too heavy to move by hand and I didn’t have the time to fish my Touareg V10 TDI out of the back of my storage warehouse. I suppose I could have just bodged something together, but I did things the right way by renting a proper tow vehicle.
Indeed, I drove 11 miles in the wrong direction to rent a U-Haul truck. I then spent a grand total of 5 minutes using that truck to move the trailer 75 feet before closing up the truck, driving that 11 miles back, and tossing the keys back to U-Haul.
This makes me wonder. What’s the weirdest reason you’ve either had or wanted to rent a truck?
My first year at college in MN (circa 1994) I sang in a choir. We went on a tour to perform at big churches in the South over spring break. Our last gig was in New Orleans. For whatever reason our hotel was waaaaaay outside of the center of town. We had a tour bus for most of the trip, but on our last night our tour manager dropped us downtown and said, “Stay out as long as you want, but you’re on your own to get back to the hotel.” One of the student leaders did the math, and it was cheaper to rent a U-Haul than take cabs, so everyone (15-20ppl?) piled into the back around 3AM to return to the hotel. We sang all the way, in the pitch black, bouncing around.
Not directly an answer to the question but something weird happened with the moving service offered by U-Haul on their website. We hired a company to help us load the U-Haul truck. The new house was 10 min drive from our old place. Their loaded the heavy stuff first, basically all the big furniture. I had a weird feeling so I decided to drive the U Haul and told them the address where we going but they never show up, they blocked us and they were gone. I knew something was going to happen when they arrived driving a Nissan Altima, that’s what triggered that weird feeling.
To this day we don’t know if they stole something, everything of value was in my car before they show up. My husband and me, along with two friends put everything in the new house and I installed cameras the next day lol
I rented a 15′ Budget truck to transport my 1953 Willys CJ3B from Illinois to Michigan, in the back. I didn’t have the coin to rent a truck AND trailer, so I used a set of ramps to drive the Jeep into the back of the truck. The truck didn’t have suitable tie-down rings to prevent fore/aft movement, so I piled some junk tires at the front of the box and crammed the Jeep into those. I then nailed 2x4s down to the cargo floor ahead of and behind all 4 wheels and strapped it DOWN as hard as I could. I figured as long as I could keep significant downward pressure on the wheels, the 2×4 chocks would do the rest of the work.
I had some dicey panic stops on I-294 going around the west side of Chicago, but the Jeep stayed put. Once I got home, I had a new problem as I didn’t bring the ramps with me. But my neighbor was a flatbed tow truck driver, so I had him back up to the rental truck, drove onto the flatbed, then he ramped it to the ground.
I rented a U haul pickup for my first go at the Ontario G driving test. My vehicle was an awful beater Volvo 240, and it seemed wise to show up in something slightly presentable. My parents were busy that day, and U haul is the only company that would rent to a teenager.
Don’t worry, I ended up failing anyways.
A several years ago, we wanted to hire a car for a week in Hawaii. Many of vehicles were already booked, and whatever available was offered for the extortingly exorbitant fee. We found out we could simply hire a regular U-Haul van for lot less as they weren’t in demand for a long time.
Not weird, but it does pay to shop around for the rental. At least it did for me when I helped my son move from Seattle to New Orleans a few years ago. Budget was several hundred dollars less than U-Haul.
Will try to keep some of the sensitive details vague here…
I used to work for a hardware startup company in SoCal that was making a big pitch to a Bay Area based company that rhymes with “Zoogle” for a major investment. We had these big 500-pound mockups of our hardware and we decided two days before the pitch meeting in SF that we wanted to show them off at the meeting in person. So I rented a 26 foot Penske truck with a lift gate to drive them up. The lift gate was key to getting the mockups on and off the truck. So we start the drive north the day before the meeting thinking we’d have plenty of time to spare before the pitch meeting the next morning. That is, until the Penske breaks down on the freeway just north of Bakersfield. We think quickly and figure our best option is to just rent another truck, transfer the mockups, and keep going. It’s 5pm and all the truck rentals in the area are starting to close, so our CEO (who called us when he had heard we broke down) then proceeded to call all the rental companies in the area and threw money at a Uhaul that still had a 26 ft truck to stay open long enough that we could get it. The Penske was towed to the nearest gas station parking lot and we met it with the new Uhaul. One problem: the Uhaul didn’t have a lift gate and there were just two of us with the truck at 8pm on a Sunday night… Fortunately the bed of the Penske was about a foot higher than the Uhaul so we docked the two trucks butt-to-butt and transferred the mockups over to the working truck. Called Penske and told them where their broken down PoS was and we were on our way. We finally rolled into SF around midnight with the Zoogle meeting at 9am the next day. At 7am we rolled into an Enterprise truck rental that had a lift gate truck available and repeated the docking and transfer. Made it to the pitch meeting just in time with the hardware. Quite the experience overall and to this day I can’t believe we pulled it off. Zoogle never ultimately invested but I can say confidently it wasn’t because of me!
It wasn’t me, but someone I know was on a business trip on Sept 11, 2001. All flights grounded, no rental cars available, everyone wanted to get home in case it was the end of the world. He rented a U-haul and drove it home empty from Pittsburgh to Hartford.
It’s not weird so much as maybe a bit ill-advised, but, I bought a racecar halfway across the country, so I grabbed a friend, we flew to Houston, rented a UHaul, and towed it home to North Carolina. The car came with a rather large storage unit full of spares and parts that came with the car, hence the UHaul. Conveniently, it also came with a trailer. Was about $2k all-in (as with racing in general, I did not keep track of the costs that closely for fear of realizing how much this shit all costs), but, I got an endurance ready 944 that was featured on the old German Lighting Sight for a screaming deal.
I once rented a U-Haul to take one of those old big-screen projection TVs to our city’s electronics recycling depot … though only the fear of criminal prosecution kept me from setting the damned thing on fire in my alley.
Regarding arson: the Uhaul or the television?
Short version. ’80 VW Vanagon Westfalia camper valve seat lifted, engine no go. Since we had our car-seat aged kid we needed a truck with three seats to tow it home. Only truck with three seats available was their largest. Truck was free to rent, dolly was $40 (1992ish). So, we drove the largest U-Haul truck home empty just towing our Vanagon. We could have put the Vanagon inside if we had a way to get it in or out. We were visiting in Oregon back when folks were fleeing CA, so they wanted trucks back.
My local municipality does a junk days every spring and fall at the service garage. You can take close to anything the be disposed of except for something like paint and tires. One year I had a ton of stuff. I rented a UHaul to dispose of two riding mowers, an old garage door we didn’t end up using on our shed, an old playground, and other smaller stuff.
The UHaul dealer said he rents his stuff to a lot of people for junk days. Great use of my property tax money!
Not me, but I witnessed this.
Years ago I was in San Francisco on vacation, and the hotel across the street from ours was on strike.
Their management/scabs rented two U-Haul box trucks parked them both back-to-back in front of the entrance so the people staying there couldn’t see the picketers outside.
I had to rent a U-Haul trailer to get my motorcycle less than a mile to my house.
I was riding my ’89 Honda Pacific Coast home from work, and it just died. I was pretty quickly able to diagnose a failed stator. Unfortunately, it was dead in an area that I didn’t feel comfortable leaving it, so I called AAA to tow it home.
That was when I learned you have to have a particular level of membership to tow a motorcycle. I did not have that level.
As I said, I was less than a mile from my house, but it was nearly all uphill on a busy street, and a PC800 is a HEAVY bike. So pushing it was out.
Finally, I gave up, called my Dad, and he went to U-Haul and got a trailer. We got it home without further incident.
A 20 minute ride home turned into a 3+ hour ordeal. But U-Haul ended up saving the day!
I picked up about a ton of wood from a friend in a uhaul van. We only had a wood stove for heat so it was worth the expense and trouble.
Overnight storage while new floors were installed.
I rented a Penske truck to move some things – which is pretty normal. The problem is I needed to return it across town when I was done and no one was available to give me a ride home; I was disinclined to pay another $40 for a rideshare.
So I rode my KLR 650 up the ramp into the truck and tied it down. Getting it turned around was less than-fun and riding both up and down the loading ramp required commitment; too slow and there’s no catching yourself from the tipover with your wheels 4 feet off the ground.
I can only imagine what people in the Home Depot thought was going on when they heard an engine echoing inside one of the rental trucks before a dude on a motorcycle full-sends it out the back and rides off.
A Percheron stallion dropped dead, no apparent cause, insurance and stuff. needs an autopsy. Austin mini pickup, Clarke three axle trailer. Thirty miles to the University vet clinic (UK wiggly miles) the dead horse weighed more the the mini!
Not me but.
Rumor has it that Jimmy Hoffa (encased in concrete) crossed the US to Vegas to become an elevator counterweight in a new casino.
Enclosed trailer of course.
I’m amazed that they let you rent/tow with the Smart. Every UHaul place I’ve rented from have been sticklers when it comes to the tow vehicle and stated ratings.
Is the Smart even rated to tow anything?
According to U-Haul’s internal systems, Smarts can tow 2,000 pounds. They can’t, but that’s why U-Haul sells hitches for Smarts and then willingly lets you rent trailers.
A part of me wants to ask how did U-Haul come up with 2,000 pounds. My best guess is that U-Haul is just pulling the data from the Curt hitch, which says its limit is 2,000 pounds and 200 pounds of tongue weight.
I’ve seen a Smart owner tow 2,000 pounds with their car. It was an enclosed trailer with two Harley-Davidsons, a generator plumbed outside, and a dog kennel. Yeah, the dog was too big to fit in the car so they put him in the trailer. To this day I wonder how they somehow drove 1,000+ miles to Sturgis without blowing the clutch or nuking the brakes…
Uhaul’s system lets you tow up to the weight of your tow vehichle.
In September of 2019 I was supposed to be one of the drivers of a 1969 DAF 55 in a Lemons race at Buttonwillow, flying from Seattle to San Francisco to Bakersfield, then driving a rental car to the track. Unfortunately while I was waiting to board at SeaTac Friday evening the flight got repeatedly delayed, eventually to the point that I would have missed the connection to Bakersfield with no hope of getting a different flight that wouldn’t involve missing pretty much the entire race. I decided to cut my losses and went home.
On Saturday morning, however, the team needed another driveshaft. DAF driveshafts are… different… in that they don’t have U-joints at the ends but instead are fitted with rubber bushings which hold splined recesses:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50001893886_c92da3cf7e_b.jpg
The only way to replace one is either by moving the engine forward several inches or by moving the rear-mounted transmission rearward several inches so as to extract one of the corresponding splined shafts. Please note this, as it is important.
It turns out that the DAF 55 uses the same driveshaft as the DAF 66, which is the same as the Volvo 66. I have two of these Volvos, one for parts, which is to say I had the only known spare driveshaft this side of Vermont. I threw the spare in my “good” Volvo 66 and started driving south, figuring I could get there in the early hours of Sunday morning in order to finish the race. I made it as far as Yolo late Saturday evening when the car started making a horrible noise. I coasted to a stop at the end of the Yolo offramp. The driveshaft had failed.
Fortunately I had with me the only spare driveshaft this side of Vermont. Unfortunately I had no way of pulling the engine or transmission with the available tools. I sat there until Sunday morning, then caught a ride to Woodland where I was able to rent a U-Haul truck and trailer. There was no longer any hope of getting to the track in time to do anything useful with the driveshaft before the end of the race so I once again decided to cut my losses and went home:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48830457201_847ae98004_c.jpg
That part was uneventful.
I don’t know if they’re that weird, but I rented one to pull a trailer with a turbo Legacy parts car on it from ME to MA and another (Budget box truck) to bring a demolished deck and stair case to the dump.
It’s not super weird, and is likely actually super common, but I rented a Uhaul truck because I needed the car hauler trailer and didn’t have a vehicle suited to hauling it and the car I put on it (a pile of crap Lincoln Town Car that was in worse shape than advertised and ended up in the scrap yard a few months later).
My kid won a 12 foot tall reed grass in a rare plant raffle after I gave her and her brother 5 tickets each to drop in random buckets. They of course won a combined 6 plants. I won zero, but had to rent a pickup from the uhaul up the street to get the giant reed grass home.
I knew someone who won a charity raffle for some sod. They went to pick up the sod and found out that they won several pallets of sod and had to rent a Uhaul to get it home. Unloading the sod by hand was a lot harder than loading, since they had a forklift at that end.
I needed to refill 2 95ft3 welding tanks and my two cars had an interior capacity of 89 and 91ft3. I just wasn’t comfortable with that in case one or both ruptured so rented a truck. The transportation ended up costing more than the refill.