Driving from US into Canada
 

My apologies if this has been covered before.
I want to rent a car in Bangor, Maine, and drive into the atlantic provinces for a week. Does Avis allow this and are there any precautions I need to be careful of?

I would check with the rental companies rules and regs. They will probably say something about that. Or call customer service. The last thing you want to do is take the car if it violates the co tract, as that invalidates insurance as well. Knew soon who made that costly mistake.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9650/5.0.0.1006 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

No problems whatsoever. If you're a Canadian citizen, Canadian customs laws do not allow for a Canadian to drive a US-plated rental car into Canada, but I do so once a month and they're ok with it since I reside in the US. If you're a non-Canadian, go on up - if you have any questions, just ask Avis. But it's almost something they see everyday, especially stations near border cities (note this doesn't apply to Mexico, of course). I've even seen one-way drops before -- I was given a Manitoba-plated car at LAX a week ago.

Avis LAX gave you a Manitoba car to drive one-way to Canada? Or was this a regular roundtrip rental? I thought some here have said rental companies can't rent out of country cars locally.

I believe the law is actually Canadian resident (even a US citizen living/working in Canada could have problems), although citizenship certainly makes that more difficult to disprove. I could be completely wrong.

We rented from Avis in Seattle and drove up into Canada to Banff and Jasper areas. I'm certain at the time I would have checked to ensure this was allowed by the contract, but YMMV so do check it out yourself with the Avis office from which you rent.

Susan

Several (4-5?) years ago, you had to inform Avis that the car would be going into Canada and then it stopped abruptly. I do it about half a dozen times a year (from Burlington, Buffalo or Harrisburg) and sometimes mention it to the agents and they always say it's not a problem.

Then tonight in BUF, when they were switching cars to something instead of another CTS, the agent kindly said "Are you heading into Canada at all?" I said yes, and she gave me a printed paper which she described as "Canadian Insurance that you'll need if you're pulled over or in an accident up there." Guess one should ask/mention it in the future.

I was given a Friendly Manitoba car to rent locally in LAX. It was a Chevy and had the touch-button US-Metric switch, but the car was definitely a Canadian-tagged car.

Correct, I guess. Based on my old tax practice, it would be a Canadian Resident for tax purposes. Although most Canadian citizens/permanent residents (Canada calls them landed immigrants) would certainly default under that rule (aka a rebuttable presumption based on the customs agent's satisfaction), other citizens could technically fit under that umbrella, though the customs officer would have to have a lot of info typically not gathered at the POE to bring up that assumption.

Never had an issue renting a car in BUR and BUF and taking it across the border to visit our neighbors to the North. The rental guys said as long as I don't drive the car into Mexico, I will be fine.