Hi all - looking for a little guidance on rental cars in the Portland airport area.

We're flying into Portland (Oregon) this September and need to rent an SUV. The rates are pretty high, and I found I can save at least $200 by renting off airport. We found good rates at Budget, which lists several close non-airport sites - one is about 4.5 miles from the airport (3400 Northeast Columbia Blvd.) and one is downtown (2033 Southwest 4th Ave.), about 12 miles. The price difference is too great to pass up, but I would also like to choose an option that will be fairly convenient.

I did make a reservation at the closer one (3400 NE Columbia), but notice when checking it out that it is mainly a Budget trunk rental facility. Does anybody have experience with using this facility for car rentals? The other choice is downtown, which would probably be good from a departure perspective, since we plan to spend our last 2 nights there. But it would take longer to pick the car up, meaning that 3 of us would wait at the airport with the luggage waiting for the driver to come back.

We'll be on the road for 18 days, and the off-airport rate for a full-size SUV (including all taxes and fees) is just over $800, so it would justify some cab fares and a little delay. But I am afraid that a truck rental site may be a bust...

Advice?

You could all take MAX into downtown for very cheap, and then get the rental there. Then noone has to wait at the airport.

I agree - hop on the MAX. Cheap and easy.

Thanks, but we are heading directly to Astoria for the first part of our trip, so need to avoid having to lug everybody and their luggage into Portland initially. Are either of you familiar with either of those Budget locations?

My goal is to get the car while the others are getting the luggage, so that we can get over to Astoria as quickly as possible.

You may have a few minutes wait for the Tri-met Light Rail.
http://trimet.org/max/

It will take you close to the downtown car rental location but if you are flying back out of PDX, the airport car rental facility saves a lot of time.

I know exactly where both of these locations are, but since I live here I don't have reason to rent a car so can't vouch for either location in that regard. I would still opt to take MAX into downtown. Portland is on the way to Astoria, so it isn't like you would be going out of your way.

Hi. I am renting an SUV at PDX through Budget. We booked it though Southwest Airline's Website (we are not flying on Southwest). It was by far the best rate we could find-- so much so that I called Southwest and Budget to verify that it was legit. We are, however, dealing with a drop-off fee that made the price of our SuV skyrocket. It is waived for this particular special, which makes it an even better deal for us. Not sure if this helps.

mjkre, that's excellent; congratulations. I'm not so fortunate, although Budget had the best price by far ($1100 at the PDX airport vs. up to $1700). I'll be saving almost $300 more by picking up and dropping off the car at an off-airport location.

Originally I had reserved an SUV through Southwest through another carrier. One thing I noticed about the "new" Southwest website - there is only one category of SUV now (vs. compact/standard/premium). When I checked my reservation on the car rental company website, I found that Southwest had actually put us in a compact SUV, which I had to cancel, since we need a larger vehicle for this trip.

I called Budget, and was told that they will actually have a SUV delivered from the airport location to the office that I have reserved for pick-up. It's a risk, since a mix-up will cost us time that we hope to spend in Astoria that day. But the $$$ savings is worth it, I hope. We'll call ahead to be sure that the right type of car is delivered to the right place. I'll try to include some report on the experience in our trip report, for the benefit of anybody else.

For those suggesting MAX, thanks for the tip. We will spend our last 2 nights in Portland, and will certainly make use of it then. Would you say it is superior to Vancouver B.C.'s or San Francisco's system, or the D.C. Metro?

I have a similar question - I got an Avis rental from their site at 330 Southwest Washington in Portland, but they do not provide shuttle from/to that site. Their on-site airport rentals are almost double that price. Is it easy to just get a taxi for car pickup/dropoff? I will have a bunch of luggage (bag & golf bag) so don't want to walk very far.

Guthrie: Call that local Avis office and ask how much a taxi would be from the airport. You might just have to take a short cab ride to get off airport grounds and then the Avis shuttle service could pick you up.

Also check if modifying your reservation for return to the airport changes the price. Sometimes you can pick up offsite but return to the airport with no extra charge (usually with Hertz but sometimes with Avis, too). If so, you'll only need the taxi one-way.

guthrie, my response above is rather dated (2011), and our actual experience didn't pan out so well. Last fall (2014), we again flew into Portland - but this time we booked a car at the same address downtown. This was much, much better. It's actually a parking garage that serves several rental car companies.

We took the TriMet from the airport. There is a stop very close to the garage - only a block or so, as I recall. There are a couple of stops close by and I don't recall exactly which one we took. I understand that you have a lot of luggage, but this might still work out - we had a fair amount of luggage and DH didn't want to walk far with it, but even he was ok with the actual distance.

Just a thought.

Thank you for the information and help.