$5/Day One-Way Car Rentals to Florida Right Now

It's time for the Great Florida Drive-In. Each autumn, the major rental car brands need to shift inventory to their parking lots in Florida to meet winter tourist demand. 

Normally, it'll cost a hefty extra fee to drop off a rental car in a different location than where you picked it up. Not right now. For the next few weeks, renters in the northeastern United States will find deals that hover around $5 a day for one-way rentals to Florida.

Why so little? It's cheaper than hiring a company to transport the cars to meet seasonal demand. Customers do the work for them. 

Rental car quote aggregator AutoSlash reports the deal is turning up in fare quotes from Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty, and Budget (which has the fewest destinations available). Frustratingly, there's no discount code to use or special link to go through—you have to price check journeys, and if you find the $5 deal being offered to you, then it's yours. When the companies have shifted enough cars to Florida, they'll stop offering the promotion. 

To maximize the chance of scoring the deal, we advise making your endpoint a major airport for tourists, such as Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, or Miami—all three of those cities have reopened for business after Hurricane Irma. We also advise traveling in the next few weeks, before the weather starts to turn cold. The companies want to move all the cars before the tourism season kicks in. 

The Great Florida Drive-In, if you can find it, has similar rules to the Great Florida Drive-Out, which reverses the motor migration each spring so cars will be up north for the summer: You can typically have the car at this low price for a maximum of 14 days. At $5 a day, that's a two-week rental for just $70 plus taxes and fees. 

Good luck!

Update: Avis has joined the others in this promotion. Its rates are $5 a day through Oct. 31, and it's being much clearer about what you need to do in order to secure the low rate by posting this information page about the deal.