Motorcycle Rental That Doesn’t Break The Bank
The EagleRider World Headquarters, in Los Angeles.
When you can rent a car for a day for as little as $35, why is it that renting a motorcycle will run you into the hundreds? I know that there have been plenty of times when I’ve been away from home and would have liked to rent a bike for a day or three but the cost would have been more than prohibitive. And there have been a couple times I have rented but man was it expensive!
Judging from a link Alan sent me it seems EagleRider may have figured out that if the price wasn’t as high they’d get more business. What they’ve come up with is something called Club EagleRider and if you join, for $29 a month, you get one day’s motorcycle rental for no extra charge per month. If you don’t use it one month that day’s rental accrues, so after seven months you would have seven days no-charge riding.
At $29 per day, times seven, that would be $203 for a seven-day rental. That’s about what I have paid EagleRider in the past for a one-day rental. Holy smokes!
Now, be aware that there are other expenses. Taxes and insurance are two, but if you drop the bike you can plan on paying a very hefty deductible for the slightest bit of damage.
Take our experience renting out of Vancouver, British Columbia. One thing EagleRider promotes as part of Club EagleRider is also getting a free rental on your birthday. Well, that’s a long-time policy and we took advantage of it back in 2011. So we had the bike for two days, one being my birthday, but after paying about $200 for one day’s rental, another $100 for taxes (this was Canada, where taxes are higher), and $50 for insurance, we ended up paying a total of $350. Ouch!
Now, the thing with insurance is that the cheapest you can get is about $50, if I remember correctly, and that’s with $2,000 deductible. If you want to pay more you can get it down to only a $1,000 deductible. In other words, if you do the bike any damage at all your expensive rental just got a heck of a lot more expensive, even with the lower deductible.
Now compare that to Club EagleRider. Say you take the bike for three days, no fee because you have three accrued days. Add the insurance: I don’t recall if you pay insurance by the day, but probably. So let’s say $25 a day for a total of $75. Then what about taxes? Again, my memory from four years ago is not crystal clear but I think we did not pay taxes for the day we got the bike free, my birthday. Is that how it would work here? Or would the government consider that paying for club membership is like rental so you pay taxes even though the bike is “free”?
Let’s be pessimistic and say you pay $50 taxes per day in the US. We’re now looking at a three-day rental costing $225. Figure in a year’s membership–$348–and it comes to $573 for a three-day rental. That’s still not cheap but we’re getting there.
Now let’s say you do a seven-day rental, with seven club days accrued.
Fees: 0
Insurance: $175
Taxes: $350
Total: $525 plus $348 = $873
Divide that by seven and it’s just shy of $125 a day. Now you’re starting to speak my language.
And what happens to that cost if you don’t pay that $50 a day for taxes? Three days total: $423, or $141 a day. Seven days total: $523 or $75 a day.
Do you get the picture? Motorcycle rental just got a lot more reasonable.
Now, I’m not going to join up this moment, but as we plan future trips I’m going to be factoring possible motorcycle rental in. And if it works into our plans I will definitely be joining up some months in advance of the trip. Thank you EagleRider for bringing this cost down to something I consider acceptable. But I do want to find out about the taxes; that will make a considerable difference. And I’m still going to be super cautious about putting even the tiniest ding in that bike.
Biker Quote for Today
Life is short. Break the rules, forgive quickly, laugh easily, keep it simple, ride often, ride free, and never regret anything that makes you smile.
Tags: EagleRider
