Depot Hacks vs. Rental Cars

colorado hirailer,

I don't know the answer, but to stick my two cents worth in!

In the 1930's and '40's movies, I saw station wagons and in the movie "It Happened One Night," with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, Ward Bond was the driver;  The Dead End/East Side, Etc., Kids and an Abbott and Costello movie ( I believe Lou Costello was the driver), was shown a small sized bus.

The kind that Die-Cast Direct sells as touring buses for our Yellowstone National Park and other Western sight seeing land formations, during the 1930's and '40's, which come in red, yellow and green, each of which is marked for a particular land, sight seeing tour.

Probably, also into the 1950's.

Ralph

This doesn't answer the question insofar as Denver is concerned but, the New Haven advertised rental cars in conjunction with their trains in the late 1930's.

Curt

Hertz was founded in 1918, Avis in 1946. 

 

Probably in the 40's only executives and the famous (or near famous) folk would rent cars.  John Q Public likely couldn't afford rental cars back then and would probably be either met at the station, take public transportation (bus or trolley) or take a cab.

 

Rusty.

Thanks, Curt:  I'd like to hear more about rental cars and RR statins elsewhere that early.  Personally,I wasn't even aware of rental cars until a car I was riding in blew a tire and was totaled east of Memphis, the day Martin Luther King, was shot!   I had to get me and the driver,  both wearing our seatbelts when they were first standard in

cars, and uninjured, when the car did a 360 in the road with the doors popped open before sideswiping a guardrail, home.  Like rollercoasters?  For a real thril,  watch the scenery spin in an Interstate 360 Tenn. state police gave us a ride to a rental car place and, I think, told us about the shooting and why we were the only traffic on the road, luckily, when it happened.

 

Car rentals at train stations may not have come along until Amtrack created new stations. Most old stations were near or in the heart of dense urban areas lacking in generous parking. 

 

There were baggage transfer services.  In San Francisco it was Red Line Transfer Co. which would pick up or deliver your baggage from your hotel or other address and take it to the train station and 1939 would be late in the (steamer) trunk era. There are several Red Line ads a reproduction Peck Judah Transportation Blue Book I have. Each ad gives the company name, address, phone number and "Check Your Baggage Direct to Anyone of the Above Points" under select timetables.

I found an old article I have about what may be the first car rental in history in Omaha during 1916.  The company eventually became Saunders Drive It Yourself System. One of the obstacles the company faced was there was a bit of a stigma to renting a car. It was an admission that you couldn't afford to own a car. By 1926 Saunders had branches in 86 cities in 22 states. Most look like storefronts or garages. Warren Avis came along after the war and focused on airline passengers. Saunders dropped out of the car rental business in early 50s and took up the longer term truck lease business instead of going into an expensive market war with Hertz and Avis.  No mention of trains at all.