I had an unfortunate adventure on our most recent road trip. The good news is that there’s a lesson to be learned from it! The story begins below, with the lesson at the end.
It was our first day on our Florida road trip, picking up our rental car in Fort Lauderdale, with plans to drop it off in Atlanta several days later. We had already visited Loggerheads sea turtle rescue center and Blowing Rocks State Park and were on our way to our next stop – St. Augustine, Florida, where we planned to explore town before heading to a 7PM escape room.
Everything was going well until we noticed an alert on the console – low tire pressure. I’m used to this warning popping up for various reasons, but we played it safe and stopped at a gas station. We read the tire pressure as 25 PSI. I checked the tire – there was a screw in it, close to the sidewall.
Everyone who’s had a tire puncture knows that a sidewall puncture is a death knell for the tire, often requiring replacing a tire, or maybe even the full set if the tires aren’t new. I didn’t particularly want to replace a rental car’s tires, but I also didn’t want to drive halfway across the southeast US on a dangerous leaky tire.
The first thing I did was to call the rental car company. Customer service told me to take the car back to where we picked it up. Unfortunately, we were already several hours away from there, and nowhere close to our destination yet. Customer service’s next action was to transfer me to Roadside Assistance to call for emergency support to patch or replace the tire.
I didn’t like this option – roadside assistance often takes several hours to arrive, and if indeed the tire could not be patched, I didn’t want to be on a spare or have to replace the full set. I hung up with customer service, filled the tire with air, checked a map, and headed to the nearest rental car facility in St. Lucie.
At the facility, the lady behind the counter was apologetic – she would be happy to trade cars with us, but her small facility had zero cars in the lot. She suggested an airport lot would have a better selection and that we try Vero Beach Airport, about an hour up the road.
Watching the air pressure reading carefully, we headed up coastal highway 1 until we reached Vero Beach Airport. The location was much more active, but the gentleman at the counter told us a similar message – no cars here, please try the next big airport up the road. So we jumped in the car and headed to Melbourn Airport, east of Orlando.
I was getting nervous that we might strike out. We had initially planned to explore St. Augustine before our 7PM escape room, and now our north star was hoping the escape room would be kind enough to let us start late.
Melbourn Airport has an unattended lot. We parked, and I sprinted into the terminal to the rental car desk. The answer? “Sure, we have a car you can trade for.”
Low on time, I sprinted back & forth a few times, getting mileage details, and trading keys so that we could get our luggage out of the old car and into the new. After signing a few documents, we were on our way. We got to the escape room ten minutes late, and our hosts were gracious enough to accommodate us.
The lesson learned? The rental car agencies all seemed happy to accommodate trading vehicles with us. This isn’t only useful for the situation of a punctured tire- often times airports run out of the most common car types and foist something less appropriate on customers. I still remember being stuck with a Yukon XL in the narrow streets of New Orleans on our honeymoon. It would have been nice to know that we likely could have swapped it out at a different location for something more wieldy and gas efficient!
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