Penske® Reviews
Penske's price was right after the AAA discount. Pickup and drop off were simple, although on drop off the agent who inspected it tried to blame me for a faulty repair on one of the caps on the box of the truck. The truck itself did get the job done, a 1,300 mile move loaded completely. I would say the truck was in desperate need of maintenance though. It was advertised as having radio, USB, and aux. It didn't have USB, and neither the radio nor the aux jack were functional. The engine light came on about 900 miles in and never went away, apparently a problem with emissions. Finally, the oil is the dirtiest oil I'd ever seen. Really, guys, change the oil in your trucks.
The truck was nearly brand new and full of gas however it reeked of cigarettes and the cab was covered with the ashes of someone who smoked with the window cracked so little ashes were all over the cab. There was also pet hair of some sort on the floor board. The cargo area had not been cleaned and there was trash though not a lot left inside. The moving pads we ordered were not available at the site we picked the truck up from (Home Depot) and they did not even offer to pull from the stores inventory to provide them. Not a big deal? I made reservation on the 21st of June and picked the truck up on the 5th of July. I had flown in from Nashville, TN to Beaumont, TX and had movers scheduled and waiting to load the truck. I really don't see any excuse for it considering the amount of time they had to prepare.
Booked a Penske truck and were guaranteed a truck but they couldn't say if it would be the 22 or 26-foot, either one would work for us and we ended up with 26 which is more common. It drove ok for a truck of that size and was clean and easy enough to pick up and drop off. No complaints and the price was great compared to others we quoted.
Made a reservation for a move stating we would return the truck to the same location we rented it from. Our plans changed and we wanted to return the truck to a different location. They could not allow that because it was a district truck and couldn't leave the area. It was an inconvenience for us of about an extra hour to return the truck to original site.
We had a mostly positive experience. The AC in the truck sometimes struggled but it wasn't horrible. Also, we got stuck with performing the engine exhaust filter cleaning procedure. It wouldn't have been a huge deal but it requires the truck to be parked for 30 minutes while it automatically revs itself up to about 1500 rpm and just stays there. This burns a ton of diesel fuel; fuel that YOU the customer paid for. There's nothing about this in the rental agreement with Penske and I do not take lightly the fact that they are essentially having customers perform a maintenance procedure. Luckily Penske agreed to refund me $50 for the experience, which offset the wasted fuel cost. The 26' truck was fully loaded and pulled a 4'x8' trailer and it still managed to deal with all of the hills of the north Atlanta area suburbs. I don't think a Budget or U-Haul truck with a gasoline engine would have been able to cope with that.
We rented a 12 foot truck, which fit the contents of our studio apartment with room to spare. We were able to fit 10 small boxes, 10 medium boxes, four to five suitcases, two cube bookshelves, a collapsible bedframe, a full mattress, and a pretty tall dresser with no problem at all. The truck was in excellent condition with working A/C and a place to plug in your iPhone so you can listen to some tunes on your journey. It was also a lot quieter inside the cab than most of the UHAULs I've used in the past. Would definitely recommend!
