Originally Posted by
m907
That's interesting info. But I've seen cars that are not brand new be over-inflated. In fact I was at National recently and was about to pick a car when an employee took it away. The guy helping people on the lot said he was just going to inflate the tires. I waited for him to come back and he had inflated the tires to 45 psi. So it must be intentional.
They are absolutely not intentionally over inflating tires. There are so many variables, but National or any rental agency has no reason to purposely over inflate tires. Likely scenarios for over inflation are:
-Tires were over inflated from the manufacturer for shipping reasons, etc. and not corrected upon introduction to the fleet
-The porters added air to the tires and did not have a tire gauge and just visually check to make sure the tires look inflated. These people are paid close to minimum wage and have to move cars in and out very quickly and do not have time to make sure each tire's PSI matches what's listed on the driver's door
-The car came from a cold climate and the air expanded in the current warmer climate giving a higher PSI
It might be different in Europe, but rental agencies in the US aren't combing over rental cars before they put them in the fleet. Maybe they should, but I've certainly never had that expectation. If you watch the people turning over they cars, they just get them processed in as fast as they can.