This is pretty tangentially related to handyman stuff, but follow me here. Many blind handymen don't own vehicles. Often we may not know someone who does own a proper vehicle, something useful like a pickup truck. But we do know sighted people who drive.
Teresa and I have rented trucks in the past for hauling large items but it looks like this Zip Car concept, www.zipcar.com, has some pretty good benefits as well as being comparatively inexpensive. You pay a $50 annual fee. Then you can use any Zip Car anywhere in the world, they are pretty much only in major cities, for a reasonable hourly or daily rental fee. The rental fee includes gas, insurance, maintenance, and milage. The cars are parked at various locations around a city, and there are maps of where the various cars are located on the website. You can reserve online anywhere from a few hours, to a year in advance. You have a special ZIPCar card, with an RFID tag on it. The card will unlock only the specific car you reserved at the time you reserved it. It won't unlock it early, and it won't unlock a different car in another location. The keys are in the car, and there is a gas card that you can use to fill the tank. Don't ask me how they prevent you from using the gas card to fill your car, I haven't seen that answer yet. Technically, milage isn't unlimited, but you get 180 free miles whether you rent for an hour or a day. Vehicles rent for anywhere from 7 bucks an hour up to something in the teens for high end vehicles. They have a couple of Toyota Tacoma pickup trucks in Pittsburgh and those rent for about $11.50 an hour. Although, there are PA and PGH taxes and fees that make it more like $16.50 for the first hour, and $12.50 for each additional hour. There is a one hour minimum rental period, but after the first hour you can rent by the half hour. There are heavy penalties if you don't return the vehicle by the end of your rental period. You can extend your period by phone, but if the car has already been reserved right after your original period, you can't extend. I've spoken with a guy at work who uses the system mainly for the pickup truck as well. He says he never has an issue reserving the vehicle, especially if he does it a few days in advance. Overall, it sounds like a very flexible and affordable way to get one's hands on a vehicle from time to time. Less expensive than UHaul from my experience. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: d...@andrew.cmu.edu Tel: (412) 268-9081
