Car rental rates are usually governed to some extent by length of rental so you can get hourly rates, daily rates, weekly rates, even monthly rates if you plan to rent a car as an alternative to short term leasing. In between all of these there are also things like special weekend rates (which can be as long as 4 days) and a range of other rates depending on when the rental company needs to move its fleet around.

All very interesting you might think, but how does that benefit you? Well, just having an idea that this is how the rates work means that with a little flexibility in your travel arrangements you could save yourself a lot of money.

To demonstrate this, lets take an example of two rental requests with very small differences to the rental but huge impact to the cost.

Rental 1
Check out on Thursday morning at 11:30 am
Return on Monday at 12:30pm

Rental 2
Check out on Thursday at 12:00 noon
Return on Monday at 11:30am

While the two rentals look very similar they would be charged very differently. For instance Car Hire Company X will charge Rental 1 out as a 5 day rental on their daily rates, but Rental 2 from the same company would be a 4 day rental on their discounted weekend rates. So, half an hour or so adjustments to your journey can make a big difference.