Domestic travel, microchip shortage contributing to Canadian rental car shortage

CALGARY – If you’ve recently tried to rent a car, you’ll likely already know there seems to be a shortage of vehicles available.

Well, you’re not wrong.

An uptick of domestic Canadian travellers, the fact most car rental companies sold off a lot of their fleet, and a global microchip shortage are making it impossible for car manufacturers to keep up with demand.

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And that’s why we’re seeing a major shortage of car rentals not just in Calgary but across the world.

Roland Van Meurs with the Alberta Motor Association says the issue being fixed is dependent on how quickly rental companies can expand their fleets again, and when domestic travel starts to wind down.

“I think we’ll see a little bit of improvement in September once the kids are back in school and that whole summer mode starts to come to an end as well. We’ll start to see things open up at that point,” he said.

He recommends not waiting last minute, suggesting booking a rental well in advance to try and make sure you get one.

“We used to have a lot of people booking last-minute stuff and that is very very hard to get.”

Some others are still not so lucky.

They’re renting U-Hauls to use as a rental vehicle because they can’t get anything aside from cargo vans and moving trucks right now.

-with files from Kayla Bruch