Rental Car Pinch in Montana, Here’s Another Option

Earlier this week, we told you about how crazy the prices are getting for rental cars here in Montana.

The LA Times reported that you will be able to fly from Burbank, CA to Bozeman, MT for $38 round trip, but the rental car will cost you over $2,000 for the week, according to Kayak.com. I did a similar search for a rental in Billings for just one day this week, and a small SUV would cost $361 just for one day.

So what do you do if you still need a rental car? There's gotta be alternative options out there, right? Turns out there is. And it looks like a pretty nice one too.

One of our radio show listeners, Jake in Billings, says he has used Turo.com. He says it is like VRBO for cars.  Basically, it is a site that allows people to rent out their cars, just like they would rent out an apartment of their house on a vacation rental website.

For example, see that cool 2021 Mercedes Benz AMG GT in the photo above? You can rent that in Bozeman for $159 a day, according to a search I just did on Turo.com. Think about that, you can rent a Mercedes in Bozeman for $200 cheaper than a small SUV in Billings.

Earlier this week I told you how a Suburban at one of the rental car companies was going for around $550 for one day in Billings through Kayak.com. In Bozeman, I found two different Suburbans available on Turo.com for around $150 a day.

Bozeman certainly had a lot of options on Turo for rental vehicles, while Billings was certainly lacking. Although, even in Billings you could rent a couple different Teslas for under $200 a day.

Will be interesting to see if more Montanans start using these rental car alternatives given the pinch in supply.