Car Rental from Montreal to Boston
 

We are thinking of flying into Montreal, driving around the area for a few days and heading to Quebec City, then going into Maine and dropping off the car in Boston after driving down the coast. Well, I just priced rentals and I got sticker shock! They wanted $1,700 for the rental for less than two weeks!

Is there another way around this, such as possibly taking a train from Quebec City into somewhere in Maine, and then picking up a car in the US? There's got to be an easier way.

Consider a round trip drive from Boston... it's less than 5 hours to Montreal... then Quebec then return to Boston via Maine... your biggest cost is the two country rental and one way drop off...

Consider flying into Burlington, VT.

Burlington pick up, Boston drop-off is about $400 for a two week rental (Alamo).

Thanks, all. I will price that. I even looked at taking a train from Montreal to just over the border in New York, but that doesn't look too feasible, either.

In general, one-way cross border rentals are very tricky - either not possible or very expensive.

Canada and the US are two different countries, so one-way rentals are a problem for the rental agencies. I suspect they cannot rent a US plated car in Canada and vice versa. Which means they have to pay someone to drive the car back to the country/rental agency (agency locations can be fairly independently operated) of origin. That's not cheap.

I think round trip to Boston probably is the easiest option. Or flying to Burlington. Also pretty easy to take the train from Montreal to Toronto, then from Toronto to the border.