I have made 5 interstate moves in the last five years, and 7 of them in the last 11 years so I have a bit of experience with rental trucks.

I checked the rates for both Ryder and U-Haul and Ryder was about $100 less.

First I tried to pick up the truck. There was three people waiting in line ahead of me and it was about 10 minutes before I was helped. I told the person who owns this franchise I had a reservation, he looked at it then went to pull up a truck. When he got to the front of the dealership the drivers side mirror fell off so he took the truck back and brought up another one. While the truck did have 60,000 miles on it, the truck had been recently serviced and did have new tires.

The first thing I noticed was that the interior light had been RIPPED out of the truck. While driving it to my storage area I noticed it was the worst driving truck I had ever had. I thought it would get better when it was loaded but no luck.

My wife and I started down the road the next day. When darkness arrived I had another problem. The headlights pointed almost straight down. I could not see five feet in front of me and since we where driving in rural Montana at the time we stopped and spent the night.

Even though the truck was a diesel, it got the same gas mileage as the other 25 foot trucks I had driven that where gas (6mpg). The truck was also gutless. Even short climbs at overpasses was too much for this truck.

The next piece of bad news came when we where unloading. The day we unloaded the truck it was raining very hard and we discovered that the front of the truck was leaking and ruined some of my wife's stuff.

Once we got it unloaded, I stopped at a gas station and topped it off fuel tank. The gas pump would try to shut off too soon, but I knew I could fit another five gallons in and did so. I watched and made sure the fuel was at the top of the tank.

We then drove less than a mile to drop the truck off. The franchise dealer in this case said they where still going to charge me seven dollars for diesel because it didn't meet their standards, and told me it is not their problem that the truck had a leak.

I will say that in previous moves, when I had a mechanical failure on the road and a blow out (with the same truck) Ryder did handle the situation quickly.

Recommended: No

Lost Goods: Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 600.00