International Student Get Vehicle In Boston

Yafeng Chen


In previous blog named international student become legal driver in Boston, I mentioned the importance of having a car in the US. I also believe that most of the international students don't have car in Boston. Therefore I am going to introduce some good ways to get a car in Boston. Even someone has a car, they need a big car that to do shift sometimes. I hope this blog will be helpful.



The first thing of getting car is that you should have a driver's license, no matter American driver's license or international driver's license. Of course, however, American driver's license is the best option.

Rental Car

Depending on different situations, rental car is a good option sometimes. When you have a long trip involving more than one day, you can rent a car from car rental company. The only thing you should have is the driver's license, even foreign driver's license can work. If you are using foreign one, you should translate it to English and provide a sheet to the company.

The total price includes the rental fee and insurance fee, but they would provide different types of insurances, with different prices, for you. To be honest, after plus the insurance, the price is pretty high. Hence, I usually rent car from some third-party website, because they can provide some discounts. This is the website, I generally use, Rentalcars.com.

Note: If your age is under 25 years old, if your age is under 21 years old, or if your age is under 18 years old, there are different policies from rental car companies. You have to pay attention to these.

U-Haul

 Even if someone has a car, they might require a big car for shifting purpose. Therefore, U-Haul is the best option. U-Haul provides different size cars, such as Van, Pickup truck, and truck. If you rent the van and pickup truck, you have to drop it in the same location that you picked it up the from. If you rent the truck, you can choose the different location to drop it. Then, the final price includes the daily rental fee and mileage fee. Before you return it, you need to refuel the gas. Otherwise, you will have to pay the gas fee, but it isn't market price.

However, only American driver's license available for this rental car. And, I didn't find it has age limitation, even for renting the big car. You also can rent other stuffs that are used for moving and shifting purposes, likes trolley, cart, etc.

ZipCar

Zipcar is a product of the sharing economy. If your trip is a short one (within 180 miles) with single day, Zipcar would be the best option. The reason is that  you don't have to pay extra gas and insurance fee. However, the pricing is reasonable. Depending on the size and the value of the car, the price vary from $7 to $15. And, from Monday to Thursday, overnight (6 pm to 8 am till next day) price is only $30 that is a good deal.

In addition, signing up for a zipcar account is pretty easy but it will take around 3-5 business days. There are some points to that you have to pay attention .
1. Account signing only can be done on PC online
2. Need to provide the photo of driver's license and send to them
3. Both mobile phone and zipcard are the keys of the car
4. Student account also have to pay the manual fee that is less than regular account

Turo

Although I never use this application to rent a car, I still recommend this method to get a car. Turo also is a kind of sharing car. Compared with Zipcar, in Turo, private car owners share their private car with customer. This company also has a mobile App. The process of renting is similar with the methods above.

All of the above mentioned suggestions are from my personal experience. If you have any good and cheap method to get car in Boston, please share with us.