Rental car rates can double or halve between similar dates in the same city. The volatility comes from a fleet that is fixed in the short term and expensive to adjust.
The fleet is bought months ahead
Rental companies purchase vehicles in planned blocks and hold them for a defined period before resale. That planning happens well before the demand it must serve is known.
Once the fleet is bought, capacity at a location is essentially fixed. More customers cannot produce more cars in the short term.
Prices therefore do the work that supply cannot, rising steeply as the last available vehicles are allocated.
Resale value drives the purchase decision
A rental vehicle is held as an asset and sold on, so the difference between purchase and resale price is a major cost of running the fleet.
When used vehicle values are strong, holding cars is cheap and companies can run larger fleets. When values weaken, fleets shrink to limit the loss on disposal.
This is why rental prices can stay elevated long after a demand shock has passed. The fleet decision lags the market.
Locations are unbalanced by one-way trips
Vehicles accumulate where people drop them off, which is rarely where they are needed next. Rebalancing means moving cars, and moving cars costs money without earning revenue.
One-way charges exist to price that repositioning, and they vary by direction because the imbalance itself has a direction.
A location with surplus vehicles will price aggressively to move them, which produces the odd situation of cheap rentals during a busy period.
Utilization targets set the floor
Rental economics depend on keeping a high proportion of the fleet on rent, because an idle vehicle still costs depreciation, insurance and parking.
That pushes companies to discount into slack periods rather than hold price, since a low rate beats an empty stall.
The same logic makes last-minute pricing unpredictable, moving down when the lot is full and up sharply when it is not.
What this means when booking
Because most reservations carry no penalty for cancellation, the quoted price is a ceiling rather than a commitment, and rechecking later costs nothing.
Vehicle class matters more than usual, since scarcity is class-specific and an unusual category can be the constrained one during an ordinary week.
Airport and neighborhood locations draw from different pools and price separately, which is why the same dates can produce very different quotes across town.