Turo simply acts as intermediary (for which, of course, they take a small fee) you're booking with an individual, not a faceless corporation that might forget you returned your car and send law enforcement after you. Private car owners - I suppose you could call them 'hosts' - post their vehicles on the service, offering others the chance to rent them for a short-term period. Founded in 2010 as a pseudo ZipCar competitor before pivoting to its current business model, Turo is often referred to as 'the AirBnB of cars,' and that's a pretty accurate way to describe it. senators are demanding an investigation into it.)Įnter Turo. (It's grown to be enough an issue that some U.S. On top of that, some Hertz customers have found themselves with a particularly severe case of buyer's remorse after being arrested and even imprisoned for allegedly stealing cars they both paid for and returned correctly.

When the pandemic hit, rental car agencies across America closed their doors and sold their fleets, assuming an end to travel as we know it - only to be caught with their pants down when people began traveling en masse a few months later, forcing them to buy up as many cars as possible, thus in part leading to the car shortages and used-car price inflation that dog us to this day. As if the dot-matrix printers scree-scree-ing out contracts with tear-off sides in their offices wasn't metaphor and proof enough, the last couple years have revealed the traditional car-rental model as more flawed than a junk diamond. The 2022 Subaru Forester Wilderness: Ready to Playīy that definition, the rental car industry is ripe for disruption.

Turo reviews