People hire vans for all kinds of reasons, but many of them relate to moving house or to business-related moves where the destination is a long way from the starting point.

This can make it expensive and inconvenient — or sometimes impossible — to return your rented van to the location you collected it from.

You can get an instant quote for one-way van hire on our dedicated page, but in this post, I’d like to explain a little more about how this works — and the extra costs you may need to be aware of.

Do all companies offer this service?

Not all companies allow one-way van hire, even if they have a national network of branches. One reason for this is that some companies, such as Sixt, use franchised branches in most areas of the UK. This means that the branches are not owned or directly operated by Sixt — they are really independent businesses who are hooked in to Sixt’s booking system.

Naturally, as independent hire companies, they need to keep control of their own vans, and cannot allow them to be dropped off at another company’s branch, somewhere else in the UK.

Who does offer one-way van hire?

If you want one-way van hire, your best bet is with a company that has a UK-wide network of corporate branches.

In our experience, the best choices in the UK are Europcar, Hertz and Thrifty. Each of these companies has 90 more UK branches and will usually allow you to pick up a van at one branch and return it at another location, as long as you specified this when you made your booking.

The other good thing about all four of these companies is that the one-way fee is included in your online quote — at least they were, when I tried some test quotes today.

How much will it cost?

Unfortunately, one-way hire fees (sometimes referred to as drop-off fees) vary widely. Companies sometimes charge different rates depending on the drop-off and pick-up locations, or the distance between them. Additional fees sometimes apply for locations within London, too.

The best approach is to use the our one-way booking engine, and then click through to the hire company’s website to check that everything you want is included in the quote. Remember that online rates are often only valid for online bookings — walk-in and phone bookings can cost most.

Any question? Drop us an email, tweet us @vanrentaluk, visit our Facebook page or leave a comment below, and we’ll do our best to help.