Who doesn’t love a good road trip? Road trips are so popular that there’s a large Facebook group that has hundreds of thousands of people called See the USA via Road Trips. It’s one of the most active travel groups on Facebook. The problem with road trips is that sometimes you want to road trip around a certain area and in order to get there, you’ll have to drive straight through for a few days. Driving all day is not only pretty boring, but it also certainly isn’t free. You could fly to a location, rent a car and then start your road trip. But is that really cost effective?
We recently did this and for us, it turned out to be a great idea. I personally can’t stand driving on i-95 to or from Florida. That to me is incredibly boring. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of cool stuff to see if you were getting off the interstate but then we don’t have that type of time. This was our first time flying up north from Florida and then starting our road trip. I would certainly do it again as it was so much better than driving for several days getting stuck in traffic.
If you are thinking about doing something like this, there’s a number of things that you need to consider.
TIME
This is the biggest issue. How much time do you have? Let’s say that you only have 10 days to do a road trip. You live in Florida and you want to do a road trip around Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Well, driving to Bozeman, Montana would take about 4 days if you drive 9 hours a day. That would leave you 2 days since you’d need 4 days to drive back. That’s not really a road trip is it? If you fly out, you’ll easily be able to find a flight within a half a day’s drive from where every you want to start your trip.
Obviously, if you have a month available, you could make it a really fun cross-country trip. There’s something fun to see just about anywhere so you can break up the trip by driving less and stopping to see things along your way.
COSTS
Make no mistake about it, driving is cheaper than flying and then driving. Having to rent a car is going to make this more expensive than using your own. For some, this is going to be a dealbreaker, but you really have to do the math to determine how much this is really going to cost you. It might not be as expensive as you think, or it might be way out of your budget. I’ll walk you through everything you should consider.
Number of people
If you’re by yourself or just a couple, the airfare won’t cost that much. If you have a family of 6, that’s going to be a ton of airfare! Unless you are pressed for time, that might not make any sense whatsoever.
Airfare and Airports
Much like the last issue, if the airfare is incredibly expensive, it might not make any sense to fly out there no matter how many people you have. However, you should be able to find some good airfare since your destination is not really set. Using the example from before, you would have a lot of options. You could fly to Salt Lake City, Bozeman, Boise, etc. This allows you to find the best flights and the cheapest airfare. You also want to see if there are any direct flights instead of connections. This is easier if you are flying from or to a hub airport.
Car rental rates
Car rental rates vary from airport to airport. Once you have all of your airports narrowed down, you can then check the different car rental rates for each one. You may find some dramatic differences. I would also consider Turo especially if you are going on a longer road trip. See our posts on finding the best car rental rates and what to consider when renting with Turo.
Hotels and Restaurants
When you are driving to start your road trip, you have to consider where you are going to stay and what you are going to eat. This is going to vary depending on your preference for brining food, fast food and regular restaurants. Same with hotels as there’s a wide variety.
Gas costs
You can use AAA’s gas cost calculator to estimate how much it will cost for you to drive to and from your starting point. This isn’t going to be perfect but you can at least get an idea of what it will cost. You can use Google maps to calculate the total miles and then add some for various detours and pit stops. So if it says 1000 miles, may you’ll want to add 50 on that. Since gas prices and gas mileage change, you’ll want to use an average.
Putting it all together
Let’s go back to our most recent road trip. Although our trip was primarily through New England, we decided to fly to Newark, NJ. Flights from Florida are very cheap and we were able to secure a great deal on Turo. We could have flown into Boston but the flights and rental car would have cost more. Let’s assume you wanted to do the same trip for 10 days.
-To drive to Newark airport it would take:
2 days there and 2 days back.
Gas would cost about $320 for a round trip
You’ll need two hotel nights. Assume that is $250.
Food costs for 2 people – $100
Tolls – $30
So just to get to that point and back, you are looking at $700
-If you flew to Newark airport:
As I said, airfare is rather cheap from Florida to New Jersey. Let’s assume round trip airfare is $300 for two people. We paid a little less than that but I’m just using average prices.
A 10 day rental car on Turo at Newark Airport is as cheap as $320.
That’s only $620 which is a rare case where flying is even cheaper than driving! I wouldn’t expect this to happen too often. But it’s important to do the math. Let’s assume that flying costs $400 more than driving for this same trip. What you have to determine is whether or not those 3 days saved are worth $400. I would gladly pay $400 to get 3 extra days’ worth of the fun travel instead of driving all day for 4 hours and dealing with traffic.
What makes sense to you will depend on a variety of factors and personal preferences but hopefully you can use all of this to help you make the best decision.