Thrifty Car Rental Introduces GPS Navigation

Thrifty Car Rental Introduces GPS Navigation

TULSA, Okla., Oct. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Thrifty Car Rental, a subsidiary of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE: DTG - News), today announced it would begin offering GPS-enabled (Global Positioning System) navigation via an optimized Garmin StreetPilot c330 at 138 popular locations in the U.S. and Canada effective October 18, 2005.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051018/datu057.html?.v=19

Here’s another blessing/curse, depending upon the feelings of the rental company. Those who see every GPS offering as an intrusive snoop into their private lives are going to feel it’s just more ‘big brother’ in action. In fairness, Thrifty is doing this right, because it’s a service the customer has to ask for _and pay for_ … more on that below.

For those of us who use rental cars frequently in unfamiliar areas it’s definitely a blessing. Wish I had a dollar for every time I blasted past my hotel and had to back track, tired, distracted and short on sleep before an early morning meeting. Worse yet is the mad dash to the airport wondering where the closest gas station is so I can fuel my rented chariot and zip on into the vehicle turn-in lane without going miles out of the way or making a U-turn across lanes of busy traffic.

I can see a business reason behind Thrifty’s daily charge … $9.95… what goes on a vehicle has to be paid for or there’s no reason to be in the rental business, but I must say the amount seems a little ridiculous in today’s world of falling electronic prices. The average rental car is kept in service for 2 years or 20,000 miles. I’m pretty sure that means each car will be rented out several hundred times. Don’t know exactly how much Thrifty is paying for these units but the current street price is well under $1,000 in single quantities so one can be pretty sure Thrifty paid a lot less in quantity. There is essentially no operating cost … perhaps $50 each to install in each vehicle … so Thrifty stands to make at least 200% profit on the deal. Even though I’m a dyed in the wool GPS enthusiast I would have to think twice before I added $10 bucks a day plus tax to my own bill.

That brings up what I feel is the most important thing to glean from this announcement. Even though GPS devices are making their way into the consumer world in ever increasing areas, they are still being treated as a luxury or ‘gizmo’ rather than the utility that they truly are. If I were setting up “Dave’s Auto Rent” you can be sure that GPS would form one of the backbones of my business … as would on-site refueling … one of the biggest detriments to rental convenience.

If I invest money in #20,000 plus automobile and rent them out to ever Tom, Dick and Mary I want to be able to know where they are and how badly they are being abused. Instead of a thousand-dollar receive only unit that gives drivers directions, I’d use a system that duplicated the Street Pilot’s feature plus enabled me to locate the vehicle at any time. The loss prevention and risk management factors alone can pay for the system in a year, easily.

The second biggest profit disincentive I see is the abysmal state of fuel handling. Rental car companies either try to sell you a full tank of gas and let you give up the amount that’s in the car when you return it .. what if you buy a full tank and only drive 40 or 50 miles? Or else let you wander around trying to find a place to fill up before turn-in. Not only are both of these options customer-unfriendly, but they cost money … because they take time and when a customer has a car for a day and is wandering around looking for gas the car can’t be rented out to another customer, the same day, exactly as it can be as soon as the first client returns it. It’s absolutely dumb not to have fuel available and just charge the customer market rate for the fuel used … the cars that go out with the ‘return empty’ option get filled up before re-rent anyway … they companies are already providing the service to a significant fraction of their users, so why not just save the wasted time … and make a lot of satisfied customers.

When I rent a car for business I go completely on price … all the “Hertz Number One” services in the world are not worth any extra costs to me … but if a company saw the way to maximize their rate of return on the rental by giving me guidance and a sensible deal on the fuel I’d become a ‘one brand’ guy overnight.