Car/Van Rental business

aurawindsurfing

Hi,

Im thinking of setting up a small car rental business similar to those known from Canaries, Spain, Greece etc. Unfotunately I have found one big issue - insurance. There is no company in Ireland willing to insure my few cars for rent. Can anyone advice me on that?

I have already looked into open type insurance and it says "Car hire excluded" so what are the options? Any car insurers here?

Cheers
Tom

antoinolachtnai

Why don't you look at some rental cars' insurance discs and see who insures them?

aurawindsurfing

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Why don't you look at some rental cars' insurance discs and see who insures them?

Will do that. But no one in Ireland was willing to give me a quote so I doubt it will make any difference

DubTony

If you've ever hired a car you'll know that they "offer" insurance. So somebody, somewhere is doing it. Have you called an Insurance Broker?

aurawindsurfing

Sure I did. As I wrote in my first post, no one wanted to give me a quote. They insure fleets only, if you have 2-3 cars, forget it. That is what I was told. I'll have a look at discs in Hertz.

niceirishfella

To be honest, the underwriters want to cover fleets, not 2 or 3 cars. There's nothing in it for them with the risk associated. They's make more with lower risk private insurance cover.
From a marketing point of view you'd be lost too as the likes of CarTrawler arn't going to list you in their engine I'd say.
Think Carefully before you commit on this.

aurawindsurfing

Hi,

Thx a lot for advice. Im waiting for replay from Quinn. It looks like 5+ cars only. At the moment I'm making only business plan so no worries ;-)

Thx for replay.

aurawindsurfing

Hey, unfortunately Quinn will not insure anything below 3000 cars! Does anyone know insurance company that may insure me?

lordnoah

This doesn't answer your question but I remember reading one time that car rental vehicles are exempt from VRT. So car rental cars could be purchased for thousands less.
Sorry don't know about the insurance issue.

Owen

Rental cars pay VRT just like all other cars.

aurawindsurfing

Sure they do.

D.W

Is the proposed service for Irish users or visitors to Ireland? If Irish only you could explore getting the person hiring the car to transfer their own insurance policy over for the duration of the rental. Might be an option to examine?

stepbar

So what's your niche going to be? What are you going to do different from the companies that provide this service on a far bigger scale?

If you can't answer either of these questions before you start, this idea will be dead in the water.

aurawindsurfing

@ stepbar Well as it happens I probably know a good niche market, and that is the idea.

@D.W unfortunately mostly for visitors. But as long as they are from EU maybe open policy would do? What do you think?

niceirishfella

aurawindsurfing wrote: »

But as long as they are from EU maybe open policy would do? What do you think?

Nope.

stepbar

aurawindsurfing wrote: »

@ stepbar Well as it happens I probably know a good niche market, and that is the idea.

You haven't answered my questions.

Matamoros

I work for a major car rental company. Providing the rental is not more than one month, you won't pay VRT on a new car. If you want to PM me I can suggest a name of a company that does car rental company's insurance.