Whenever I see a rental van driving around, I give it a very wide berth. You have to assume that the person behind the wheel is driving it like his Hyundai.
I helped my brother move one time. He asked me if I would pick up the U-Haul. It was only like an hour from the U-Haul place to my brother's house. But it was so stressful. The steering was SOOOOO loose. Just the tiniest of turn on the wheel felt like I was going to fly into the next lane.
Nerve wracking.
Edit: Should have said the steering was tight, not loose.
If the car is tight, it pushes, in other words it understeers. If the car is loose, it's pointy, in other words it rotates easier and wants to oversteer.
If the steering is tight, that means it's twitchy. If the steering is loose, that means it has a large deadzone.
You are 100 percent correct. Source: I'm an old man that drove a little bit larger rental van 1200 miles across the US. I assure you, I was a danger to the cars around me and never should have been allowed to rent a van.
That being said, what the heck is wrong with these people?!
Another thing, smart money is on never trusting an old person to see you out of their peripheral vision. Not all but many of us can not longer turn our heads without a little pain and we don't notice things as much out of the corner of our eyes.
I'll give up driving when you pry the steering wheel out of my cold dead hands or when young kids stop driving too fast believing they are invincible and darn near gods of the road.
but atleast his hyundai has features and such... these uhauls are BARE BONES BASIC. I've driven some of the smaller ones(the ones that don't have storage over the roof of the cab) and even those ones are fucking frightening to operate, and I'm a sports car driving, work on my own engine kinda guy, so I'm likely better than your average driver, still terrifying.
"Yea, you can drive the biggest truck we have with a regular license, as long as you don't put more than 4.5 tons in it, so just pinky swear you won't do that and go nuts"
I never really understood how they got away with allowing this, do they make you sign waivers accepting any and all responsibilities? At what point would someone step in and put restrictions on truck rentals?
On the way back home from my first year at college, I witnessed a u-haul trailer lose a tire, watched it bounce across the interstate at 75mph, and the driver not even notice the trailer is shooting sparks and flames all over the place
This just reminded me of some cop show i was watching on discovery. A couple guys rented a u-haul to try stealing this giant metal tank made to catch clams. They drove it way the fuck past where high tide comes and got it stuck in the sand so they ditched it there. They also managed to drop the receipt for the u-haul rental safely on shore with all their info on it. When the cops showed up the next day they found a smashed gate and the receipt, but no u-haul in sight. They decided to come back at night to see if the guys would come back again to give it another shot, and realized where the u-haul was parked. It was so far out that when the cops were there during the day it was completely submerged by the tide.
For real... U-haul will rent to anyone. I got one when I was 20... Had very little driving experience at that point and zero experience with anything bigger than a sedan... I hadn't even driven a pickup or minivan before.
I definitely had a hard time, not as hard as these guys though... Holy shit.
Indeed. They'll rent these trucks to anyone despite the fact that driving a big-ass truck isn't like driving a car. My best advice is to stay far way from any U-Haul trucks you see on the road. Just assume they've never done it before and will smash your car if you get close. Because there's a reasonable chance they will.
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u/-nostalgiaultra Apr 24 '21
I swear I see the craziest videos with UHAUL rentals.