Cue the Seinfeld episode: “You know how to take the reservation, but you can’t seem to keep the reservation.”

Almost a month ago, it turned out that I need to tow a car to the shop. I called the shop; they can’t even take it in until the 25th of this month. (A whole ‘nother rant, of course.)

I figured I’d be proactive — go ahead and reserve a dolly, a full three weeks ahead of time. Great. No problem. Hit up U-Haul’s web site, tell ‘em what I want, what I’m towing, what I’m towing with, where I want to pick up the equipment, when I’ll pick it up, and how long I’ll have it out. Easy, peezy.

Text message comes in: “You will be receiving a call shortly from a U-Haul representative.” Email form U-Haul: "A local U-Haul representative will call you before 5pm on Saturday, October 11, 2025 to get your agreement on and schedule available location, time, and equipment.”

Well. The 11th has come and gone, with no call and no further communication from U-Haul at all.

So this afternoon I stopped by the location where I set up to pick up the dolly. I asked about the call I was supposed to get. She said, “They’ll call you before 5pm on the day before your rental to confirm and let you know where it is.” What happened to that whole October 11 thing? And then she continued, “Oh, you’ll probably have to pick it up somewhere else. They never send me a dolly.”

Naturally, my questions were “why do I make a reservation for a time and place, when U-Haul is just going to ignore it?” and “Where do you suppose I’ll have to go to get it?”

I’m going to have to take time off work to tow this car to begin with. And now I may have to take even more time, because I may have to go two towns away to pick up the stinkin’ dolly? U-Haul can’t arrange to have equipment where it was agreed to be? Gee, U-Haul, I guess I may or may not have it back on time, particularly if I have to take it back to the same [yet unknown] place I pick it up from.

I’m sure it will do me ZERO good, but U-Haul corporate is going to hear about this once it’s all finished.

Grrr.

- - - - -

Oddly enough, the U-Haul location just a mile away from my chosen location has two full car trailers (not dollies) sitting in the lot.

Had the same experience on a One Way Moving Truck Rental last month.

Specifically wanted to pick it up at a U Haul location, not some Gas Station or Body Shop.

I went to the location two days before my pickup to make sure everything was in order, we were going from the San Francisco Bay Area to Utah. Same thing as the O.P., No you pick it up where we tell you to (in an e-mail I hadn't even seen yet). Part of it was they didn't want to lose any of "their" trucks to a one way rental.

The main U Haul location was already about 10 miles away and where I was supposed to pick it up was another 5 miles further. And the location was some hole in the wall garage with no other U Haul equipment on the premises.

So I went home and rebooked the Truck to be picked up at some Gas Station about a mile away. Get the confirmation and now I'm picking it up at the main U Haul location.

Guy wasn't happy when I showed up to get the Truck.

Once Rented a U_Haul double axel enclosed trailer for about 1500 mile move... Once unloaded it was substantually cheaper to drive another 200 miles (round trip)to another U-Hau store location And dropping the trailer there..even considering my extra fuel cost.. Rather than dropping the trailer off in our large metro area ...... They basically claimed it was cheaper for them to pay me ( 1/2 price orignal rental fee ) to deliver the trailer for them rather than them paying a U_Haul employee to deliver the trailer out to a non-metro area location............................ drill sgt.

I once rented a double axle enclosed trailer to move from MT of Albany, NY. Cost was about $250 from here to there. Moving back three years later, I called the local (there) U-Haul and the price for the same trailer going the other way was just north of $3,000. I told the guy that I could buy a trailer for that much. His response? "Then go buy one", and he hung up on me.

Screw U-Haul.

Sorry for your pain.

With towing coverage on insurance, it is cheaper to have a roll-on wrecker move the car.

In our area, $150 would get a wrecker job done--taking a damaged car to a dealer lot.

The biggest concern with rental trailers is lack of maintenance. Bearings and tires are not maintained, and you cannot a priori expect a vthoky grade trailer at any location, even if they have more than one trailer.

Y'know, I hadn't really thought about having it professionally carried.

The U-Haul (full) trailer will cost me $63, which is better than $150. Then again, my time is worth a buck or three, and having it towed/hauled professionally means no wear on my truck doing the towing. Maintenance is a big variable, no doubt.

Thanks for the suggestion!

I've only rented from U-Haul once, and it was fairly trouble free. My ex-GF's daughter was heading to college in Denver from Portland, and asked me to help her move. She wanted to take her old beater BMW along, so I rented a car carrier (not the dolly) from U-Haul. They wanted to know what I was going to use to tow it. Well, the year before I was shopping for a smallish used pickup and was looking at Colorados and Rangers and the like. I stumbled onto a good deal on an older (2000) Tundra and bought that instead. That turned out to be a good choice, as U-Haul said a Ranger or Colorado wasn't "beefy" enough to tow the thing. Even the Tundra had to be the "Access" variant with the extended cab, and the small (4.6L?) V8. That's what I had, but I had to ask.

"Waitaminit. Why the Access? I understand the engine requirement, buy why the extended cab? It's the same chassis, the same engine, the same tranny, the same hitch mount, it's the SAME FRICKIN' TRUCK! The only difference is they put the extra length in the cab instead of the bed. What the @#$%^&* does that have to do with how much it can tow?"

Of course the guy's answer was to shrug and say "I dunno, that's just what's listed in the book." Not sure why I expected an intelligent answer from the guy. Anyway, we got the car to Denver and I dropped the trailer at the local U-Haul store, no problem. Maybe the difference in experience was because I made the reservation in person at the store instead of online?

My Auto Insurance has towing coverage . Check yours .

Last spring, I rented the dual axle 6'x12' open top trailer for some landscaping projects. My reservation was noon Friday to noon Saturday. I show up and miraculously they have my reservation in stock, but had to wait in line at the counter for 30 min because they didn't have the one for the guy in front of me

I finally have my paperwork and go out to find the lot attendant who is nowhere to be found. I follow the scent of weed and find him smoking weed in the conex/lot office. Mr dope fiend looks like he has spent some time in prison and proceeds to tell me that he hates back-up cameras and that he'll guide me with hand signals in my rearview mirror. He gives all back-up hand signals too high for the back-up camera to see and the genius decides to position himself between trailer and my truck and walk backwards further insuring I cannot use the camera to see the trailer tongue. A normal person would stand over the tongue, give hand signals, and let the driver decide for themselves whether to use camera or rear view mirror.

I'm backing up using my mirror (i.e. not my preferred way) and following his hand gestures then about 2' from the trailer he starts making wild gestures for me to crank the wheel. The rocket scientist walking backwards and giving hand signals hadn't been guiding me back anywhere near the trailer tongue. I had to pull forward and make a 2nd attempt. Then, I get out and he has the nerve to complain nobody knows how to back up any more I just wanted to get on about my day so I bite my tongue and insure the hitch, safety chains, and lights are properly hooked up.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
I once rented a double axle enclosed trailer to move from MT of Albany, NY. Cost was about $250 from here to there. Moving back three years later, I called the local (there) U-Haul and the price for the same trailer going the other way was just north of $3,000.

Back in 2017 when we moved to TX from CA, we decided to move ourselves; we got rid of a lot of stuff, and it was less expensive than the moving co. quotes we got. And nothing got lost or damaged. But it took three separate trips, the first one was a 26' Uhaul truck, I drove it in two days, the whole trip was great, off loaded with some friends, stayed with a friend overnight, bought them dinner, flew back home the next day. The cost of the rental was approx. $1700 one way. Several years later, I found out the Uhaul cost for the same exact drive door to door was over $7000. Crazy.

At my previous job, almost 25ish years ago now..... dang I'm getting old ...

We had U-Haul stop in one day and asked if we wanted to be a rental location. They provided the phone line, card machine and advertisment and such for the first year.

We debated a bit but agreed as it seemed like it would be a ok source of some passive income. They came in, set everything up and we were on our way.

Fast forward a few months and we sort of started to regret agreeing to it. It wasn't a difficult thing, I just answered the phone, took the reservation and card info and that was that. When the customer came in, we did the paperwork and sent them on there way.

The issue tho, it was a very rare occasion we ever actually had any equipment on the lot. Like seriously rare. People would occasionally drop something off by us but it was usually picked up within a couple hours by someone that didn't go through us.

It was to the point that we were basically nothing more than reservation takers. I was the one that handled things and it got to the point very quickly where I actually told everyone that called us for a reservation that they should also make a backup plan and to call before they came out as it was unlikely that we would actually have anything there for them.

There was nothing we could do about it and even tho they were not happy about that, they were at least happy that I was honest and up front about it.

It was basically the Seinfeld episode in real life some days.

After the year was up and we had to start paying for things we said no thanks. They pulled there equipment and went on there way. We did get some money out of it but just wasn't worth the PO'd customers.

I would like to think they have gotten better since then, but I know that is unlikely sadly.

Best way to make a reservation with Uhaul is to physically go to the location where you plan to pickup the rental instead of utilizing the online reservation system. I've never had an issue when I've gone to a physical location to make the reservation.

4MUL8R: Thank you again for the suggestion to get the car towed. It’s a bit more costly than your estimate, but insurance will cover almost half of it. Plus it saves me the hassle, and saves wear and tear on my truck.

I’ve rented trailers to move my kids to and from college, new jobs, and now myself to my retirement house (home sounds institutional). Every time I use the corporate UHaul depot in town, something always gets screwed up. But, if I use the local guy down the street, I never have issues and somehow it’s a couple bucks cheaper. YMMV.