飓风“桑迪”毁车无数 感恩节租车需求剧增

感恩节迎来美国出行高峰，但因大批车辆在飓风“桑迪”袭击期间被毁，美国东北部地区的租车需求在此期间急剧增加。该地区很多租车行都无车可租，就算有几辆可租，租金也高得离谱，每天的租金达350美元，以致有些用户考虑以更低的价格租辆卡车回家过节，卡车的租金每天才19美元。为了缓解这一局面，很多租车行都开始从其他未受飓风影响的地区调集车辆，同时还将本打算出售给二手车行的老旧车辆重新列入可租车型。据悉，飓风中被毁的车辆有些是被水淹，有些则是被飓风吹落的树干砸毁，有五家保险公司称飓风后已接到3.8万个车损理赔电话。

Thanksgiving travelers who have yet to rent a car in the Northeast are out of luck: Superstorm Sandy has created a shortage.

The storm has damaged thousands of cars — including those owned by rental companies. The loss of vehicles has been compounded by rising demand. Thanksgiving and Christmas are normally busy rental periods. And lingering mass transit problems caused by Sandy have added to demand.

Existing reservations are mostly being honored, but people who still want to book for Thanksgiving are finding almost no cars left. The few cars available carry a hefty premium.

Tadd Rosenfeld is flying into New York's LaGuardia airport Wednesday. He couldn't find a car with any major rental company. U-Save was the only one with a car and it wanted nearly $350 a day — more than his plane ticket from Florida. Now, he is considering renting a moving truck.

"Showing up to Thanksgiving in a U-Haul is worse than showing up with an escort. But at $19 a day, it's tempting," says Rosenfeld, CEO of TeamLauncher.com, an outsourcing company based in Miami.

To help ease the shortage, car rental companies have driven in thousands of extra vehicles from elsewhere in the country. They have also kept older models that they would normally sell to used-car dealers.

They'll need every car. Thousands of people in the Northeast are still without vehicles. Some cars were flooded by surging waters and will be replaced with new ones once insurance checks are cut. Others were damaged by falling trees and debris and are in body shops waiting to be repaired.

Insurance companies State Farm, Progressive, New Jersey Manufacturers, Nationwide and USAA told The Associated Press in the days following the storm that they received about 38,000 car-damage claims. Other companies either did not return calls or declined to release claims information.

"It's an unusual situation," says Neil Abrams of the Abrams Consulting Group, which focuses on the car rental industry. "Unfortunately, you can't go out and buy cars for a demand spike. You don't know how long it will last."

Car rental companies were hesitant to speak about their own losses but Avis Budget Group Inc. says it removed from service 2 percent of its fleet from Philadelphia to Connecticut. The company did not respond to repeated requests to clarify how many cars that was.