Rental Companies Offer Cheap Gas, Other Discounts

Hoping to keep wallet-conscious road trippers behind the wheel, car-rental agencies are offering a series of gas discounts that allows customers to snag a tank for well below the national average of $3.94 a gallon.

Combine those upfront savings with the growing fleets of fuel-efficient rental vehicles and it may even be cheaper to rent than to drive your own gas-guzzler to the family's favorite vacation spot this summer. An owner of a 2008 Dodge Durango who makes a weeklong, 1,500-mile trip between Virginia Beach, Va., and Orlando, Fla., for example, would actually save $65 by driving a 2008 Ford (F) Focus rented from Hertz (HTZ) instead. (That savings includes the $186 weekly rental fee.)

Here are the latest car rental deals:

Not all gas promotions are so short-lived, however. Many of the major car-rental agencies, such as Avis (CAR), Dollar Thrifty Auto (DTG) and Enterprise, offer gas discounts of as much as 25 cents per gallon to renters who opt to prepay for half or a full tank of gas when they pick up their car. Enterprise, for example, sets its prices at an average 15 cents lower than other area pumps, with some branches offering even more substantial savings, says company spokesman Ned Maniscalco.

Of course, there's a catch — and a couple of pitfalls. Prepaying only makes sense if you return the car on empty. There's no refund for leftover fuel. In fact, rental agencies bank on you returning the car with at least some fuel in the tank — which helps them recoup the discount, says David Lytle, editorial director for Frommers.com. And don't expect to reap the benefits of low rates if you opt to buy your own fuel, then later decide to let the rental agency top off the tank. If you don't prepay, you'll not only get hit with higher per-gallon prices, but also a convenience surcharge that can double the per-gallon price. At Avis's Philadelphia location, for example, refueling costs $4 more per gallon than if you signed up for prepaid fuel.

For drivers planning to rack up the miles, prepaying for discounted gas makes a lot of financial sense. To help calculate potential savings, call the rental agency and ask for the price of a gallon of regular unleaded. Then compare it with local gas station prices that you can find on monitoring sites such as GasBuddy.com and GasPriceWatch.com.

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