This start-up has a solution to the rental car shortage

The rental car shortage is the number one travel problem in the United States in 2021. This summer, more and more people will have to make the difficult choice between carpooling, using public transport or paying hundreds of dollars by car. day for a rental car, if they can. find one.

But a start-up has another solution. Avail Car Sharing, which launched in late 2018 and expanded during the pandemic, sells a car rental-like experience without the risk typically involved in carsharing.

His timing is good. The car rental shortage is not about to end. Major car rental companies have aggressively cut their fleets during the pandemic. But they can’t buy new cars now because of the chip shortage. This means summer travelers will see fares of a hundred dollars a day at least until August, and possibly longer.

But is Avail the solution? I spoke to Mike Osborn, CEO of Avail, to find out how Avail is positioning itself during this summer’s car rental shortage – and what it means for consumers.

Lucky timing during the car rental shortage

We’re in the middle of the carpocalypse – the biggest rental car shortage in rental car history. It looks like Avail is in the right place at the right time. How did you deal with this?

As my kids like to point out to me, it’s often better to be lucky than to be smart. We certainly couldn’t have predicted the severity of the pandemic, nor do we want to build a long-term strategy from a single event. But the self-imposed car rental fleet shortage surely doesn’t hurt our efforts to build Avail in 2021.

When it comes to peer-to-peer carsharing, the ground is already crowded, with established competitors like Turo and Getaround. Avail is owned by Allstate, an insurance company. But how is it different from the competition?

Avail addresses the issues that other carsharing services demand from customers, both car owners and car renters and borrowers.

For example, trained Avail employees oversee all vehicles on our secure lots, 24/7, ensuring consistency and safety for our customers while removing any guesswork or worrying about where and when to redeem. keys.

We inspect, clean and disinfect all vehicles on the Avail platform. Avail staff help customers with their luggage and take them safely on the shuttle to the airport or on the road to their destination. And every vehicle comes standard with a suite of Allstate protection services, including comprehensive insurance coverage for both parties.

How Avail’s solution to the rental car shortage is different

When I look at the Avail site, I see cars available and the cost is about 20% less than car rental rates. Other than lower price and availability, how is your solution better?

We offer borrowers more flexibility than a traditional car rental service, with a wider selection of locally relevant vehicles as they are locally owned. That means more SUVs to haul your ski gear to Denver and more convertibles to soak up the Southern California sunshine when you take our land in Los Angeles.

We remove the little frictions that frustrate customers, with no queues, counters, and boring paperwork to fill out. And, more importantly, with the pent-up demand to visit loved ones, we don’t include any hidden fees or upselling.

I guess the million dollar question is, do you have enough cars to meet demand?

What makes this business interesting in the long run is the natural advantage of timing: people exit our markets roughly in sync when other people come to visit our markets. The calendars are fairly well aligned around the major travel seasons: spring break, summer vacation, and summer vacation which makes up the preponderance of leisure travel.

Carpocalypse or not, our fleet is growing at the right time to meet demand. We are amplifying this cycle with promotions to encourage those who have an underused vehicle to register their car during expected peak periods. Fortunately, these features help us avoid problems with the current rental car shortage and, in fact, allow us to profit while the situation persists.

What about the regulatory environment for carsharing?

Speaking of competition, even if you take out other peer-to-peer carsharing companies, you still have car rental companies. And they’ve been aggressive enough at the state level to try to regulate carpooling. What is your take on this conflict and how does Avail position itself?

We have positioned ourselves well in the hearts of our customers, who use our service repeatedly after trying it for the first time and telling their friends about it.

Recent history provides many examples of extreme disruption to traditional industries that prefer to defend their business with aggressive regulation rather than obsessive customer focus. We prefer to devote our resources to serving clients, rather than lobbyists and selfish public relations campaigns.

How to survive a pandemic as a startup

One of the most amazing things about Avail is your timing. You launched in the fall of 2018 and were flying under the radar, as they say. Then, just at the start of the pandemic, you opened the majority of your 15 locations. How did you do when people stopped traveling?

The trip is grounded in the human experience, so we were confident he would return. People are by nature social and exploratory creatures; our well-being is enhanced when we connect with our loved ones and with the world around us.

Confidence in the rebound in leisure and domestic travel has encouraged us to invest more in our service and expand our geographic coverage. We opened new locations during the pandemic and increased our marketing to potential vehicle suppliers and those in need of a temporary vehicle. We wanted to be ready to serve Americans when they needed it most – when, more than ever, they needed to get out and explore.

OK, I don’t imagine the pandemic was part of your business plan. What was driving this thing?

Another contributing factor that the pandemic presented to Avail was the mass market’s recognition of a well-researched problem – that Americans own $ 4 trillion in vehicles that one estimate sit idle 95 percent of the time. and consume nearly 15% of real real estate in major US cities.

What seemed abstract, especially to those of us used to driving to work, now hits us right in the face: my vehicle is right there, and my car payment, my car insurance bill, and my expenses. parking costs me every day. The pandemic has caused many Americans to view car ownership differently and find a better way to share their cars.

How long will the car rental shortage last?

Looking at the car rental and carsharing landscape three months, six months and a year from now, what do you see?

I see tremendous growth for carsharing. I certainly cannot predict the rate at which the car rental companies’ fleet renews. And despite headline after headline denouncing the car rental shortage, the rental car oligopoly has no incentive to do so in a hurry, as they are raking in record profits right now.

After choosing to phase out the fleet to cut costs, rental car services can turn around and charge customers – over $ 200 a day is not uncommon right now. And, as usual, customers pay for car rental practices.

Long-term solutions that create a surplus for consumers will win, especially now that social media and the focus on anti-consumer practices hold businesses accountable.

So you stretch out?

Yes. Avail will increase the value we create for consumers by expanding our geographic coverage so people can lend and borrow vehicles in more places, making it easier and cheaper to reserve our vehicles, and giving people more. of confidence that the vehicle will match their purpose. And we will never hide the fees or entice people to buy something that does not directly benefit them as a consumer.

In one year, you’ll find people sharing Avail cars in dozens of cities across the United States, in multiple locations in every city, and with the same consistent, reliable service and a high degree of trust and protection that sets them apart. collectively Avail from other shared cars. services.

What travelers can do to get around during the rental car shortage

What kind of action can consumers take today to ensure they have the best mobility options when they travel? What kind of considerations should they take into account, when it comes to ground transportation?

Do your research. There are many options, and each of them, including the usual rental car choice of many Americans, involves trade-offs.

When considering a carsharing service because you want to enjoy a more locally relevant vehicle set and more affordable pricing, you also agree to treat the other person in the sharing transaction as you would like. that she treats you, and that goes for the way you treat their car.

Avail borrowers know they’re renting from someone like them, which means driving safely, not smoking inside vehicles, and returning cars to the same condition. By design, we make it easy for Avail borrowers to avoid the pitfalls they might face with a traditional car rental company.

We just won’t use the practices that trip people up at the counter – no upselling redundant insurance with their current coverage, no markup on tolls, and no hidden charges when they want to share the driving. .