How much does it cost to rent a cargo van?

This is the whole page. The clock charges you for holding the van and the odometer charges you for using it, and then the pump charges you a second time for those same miles. At our defaults one day at $40 is $40 of rental, while 60 miles at $0.90 is $54 of mileage charge and the gasoline behind those same miles is $13, which is $67 between them and more than the rental. Put the coverage and the fees on top and the day is $142, or $2.37 a mile all in. So the figure the branch leads with is $40 of a $142 bill, and a reader who budgeted the day rate has budgeted under a third of the day. Nothing is being concealed. A rental is quoted per day because per day is the unit a customer asks in, and a van is consumed per mile because miles are what wear it out, and the two units only meet on the invoice. What makes a cargo van the sharpest case is the ratio: the headline is low and the per-mile charge is not, and van trips are short enough that the odometer catches the clock inside a single afternoon.

A van job is rarely one trip. A move between two addresses is several round trips, and every return leg is metered exactly like the outbound one, so a reader who enters the distance between the two addresses has entered a fraction of the day. Add the drive from the branch to your loading point and the drive back to the branch at the end, which are odometer miles that nobody counts because they are not part of the job in your head. Add the detour to the storage unit, the second stop at the tip, and the wrong turn in a vehicle you are not used to driving. Then check the figure against the allowance, because where a rental includes miles rather than charging flat, only the overage belongs in the mileage input, and an allowance that sounded generous at the counter and a day of round trips frequently still meet in an overage. This input drives two lines at once, so an error here is an error twice.

The phrase that decides this is commercial use, and it catches people out because the vehicle looks ordinary. Personal auto policies and credit card rental benefits are commonly written to exclude vehicles rented for business or commercial purposes, and a cargo van is often named in the exclusion by class rather than by what you are using it for, so a van hired to move your own sofa can still land outside the cover you assumed you had. This is worth a call to your insurer and a call to your card issuer, asking about a cargo van by name rather than about a hire car, before you decline anything at the counter. If you take the branch's waiver instead, read what it carves out: a deductible, the contents of the van, and overhead damage, that last one being the damage a tall van is likeliest of the three to collect at a drive-through or a car park barrier. What is in the back is a separate question from the van, and the fees input is where cover for the load belongs.

You will be asked for one, and it is worth asking its size before you turn up, because it has to clear your account for the length of the rental and a hold on a debit card behaves differently from a hold on a credit card. But it is not a cost of the trip: it is money held against damage, fuel and late return, and it comes back when the van does. Adding it to the ledger above would overstate what the day costs you, and this page prints ledgers you can act on rather than balances you have to unwind afterwards. The related thing to ask about in the same call is the payment method, since branches vary in whether they take a debit card at all for a commercial van, and finding that out at the counter with a load waiting is the expensive version of the question.

The day rate is a branch's quote against the day, the location and the season, so this page leaves that figure to the branch rather than inventing one to stand in for it. What the page adds is the part the day rate cannot show you, which is what the job costs. A van runs on two meters at once: the clock bills you for the days you hold it and the odometer bills you for every mile you put on it, and then you buy the gasoline those same miles burn. Put your figures into the form above and you get the trip total, the all-in cost per mile, and how much of the bill the day rate really was. At our defaults one day and 60 local miles come to $142, or $2.37 a mile, of which the advertised day rate is $40. That gap is worth knowing before you book rather than when the van comes back.

Yes, and they are two different bills that happen to run off the same odometer reading, which is exactly why they get conflated. The per-mile charge is the branch's, paid to the rental company for the wear you put on its vehicle, and it appears on the rental invoice. The gasoline is the trip's, paid at the pump on the day, and it never touches the rental agreement at all. So every mile is paid for twice, once to the branch and once to the fuel island, and at our defaults those two lines are $54 and $13, which is $67 against $40 of rental. Ask the branch for the per-mile charge and the included mileage allowance by name when you get the rate, and check whether the allowance runs per day or across the whole rental. Ask about unlimited mileage too if you are driving any distance, then price it here both ways, because unlimited miles at a higher day rate is a bet on your own route.

It depends on how many trips the load takes and what you can already tow, and each of the three wins somewhere. A trailer is the low-cost option when you have a vehicle rated to pull it, because you tow it with your own car and there is no per-mile charge on the rental at all, which is the arithmetic our trailer rental page is built around. A cargo van beats a trailer when you have nothing to tow with, when you want the load locked and dry, or when you would rather not reverse a trailer in a city. A box truck costs more per day and often more per mile, but it holds several van loads, and since the mileage line is what grows fastest here, one truck trip can land below three van round trips even at the higher rate. Work out how many van loads the job really is, then price one truck trip against that many van trips using this page, and let the totals decide rather than the day rates.

Check rather than assume, because this is the class of vehicle where cover most often goes missing. Personal auto policies and credit card rental benefits are commonly written to exclude vehicles rented for commercial or business use, and cargo vans are frequently excluded by vehicle class as well, so cover you would have had on a hire car can quietly not apply to a van even when the furniture in the back is your own. Call your insurer and your card issuer and ask about a cargo van by name, and ask specifically whether the exclusion turns on the vehicle class or on what you are using it for. Then decide the waiver at the counter with an answer rather than a guess. If you do take the branch's waiver, read the deductible, and note that it will almost certainly exclude the contents of the van, which is a separate cover and a separate decision from the van itself.