British Columbia/Getting Around By Car

Here's some advice related to getting around by car, and hiring suitable cars for a kayaking trip in British Columbia. Actually this is currently just text pasted from a question which Nojer2 posted on '[travelwiki]' on the ['talk:British Columbia' page]. Thanks to [Webgeer] for the useful response.

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I went on whitewater kayaking holiday to British Columbia with a group of friends, and we ran into a problem which maybe someone has some suggestions for. We needed to get to remote places, rivers, campsites, etc, which were often along bumpy logging tracks. We flew into Vancouver, and we only managed to hire smart businessmen's cars. Admittedly we didn't spend very long looking, but for future reference, can anyone recommend car hire shops in Vancouver or other cities, which would have hired out big robust trucks?

We managed to get around with our smart cars, and it was an awesome holiday, but it did get a bit tricky in places, and the car hire firm was less than impressed with the state of their cars at the end of it! Check out this [funny photo of one of our unsuitable cars]

-- Nojer2 12:04, 1 Dec 2004 (EST)

Almost all the car rental companies will rent you a 4x4. Unfortunately they are generally ridiculously expensive -- often with additional mileage charges. However, the prices vary even more than regular car rentals so calling around to everybody is often worth it. Usually Vancouver is much cheaper to rent vehicles than the other small towns. However that is not as true for the 4x4's which you may be able to find for cheaper in smaller towns. If you are travelling around in the winter and you are going to leave from the lower mainland, you should make sure your rental will have snow tires. (Most rentals in Vancouver only have all-season tires)

Vancouver also has some independent car rental companies. Generally their prices are only a little bit cheaper than the national chains in the very competitive small-midsized car classes, but I think they may be more significant differences in the less competive truck/suv rental catagories.

It should be noted that most of these companies do not rent true off-road vehicles, and the rental agreement will probably have a statement about not permitted to take it off-road or on any un-maintained roads. In some cases I have even heard of them locking out the 4wd to discourage use off-road. (If they did that to me I would seriously complain)

As you discovered many of the roads to very out of the way places are quite accessible with standard sedans -- with very careful driving and you take things pretty slow. However, you really have to be careful about insurance coverage and make sure that you have some sort of coverage as you may not be complying with your rental agreement by driving on non-maintained roads and therefore insurance from the rental agency and possibly your credit card would not cover you.

I will probably try and add some comments about rental cars in the main article to cover these issues as you raise some good things to consider. -- [Webgeer on travelwiki] 19:31, 2 Dec 2004 (EST)