Advice for America trip... please?

[ogre142]

I am a 17 old from England who is making plans for a road trip round america next year. My two friends will hire a people carrier between them whilst i buy a 2nd hand bike over there. We are but younglings in this world of touring and need some general advice (generally for me). I am unsure of what i'd need to get: insurace for 2 weeks? Road tax? Bike tax? Is a englsih lisence acceptable? i barely know the UK system let alone the US one and so i implore you for some of your knowledge, i need to know what things i'll need to get and how much that will roughly cost. Many thanks to any contributors,
Olli

[Biker101]

Well you usually need to be 21 to hire a car, sometimes 23 so your friends may struggle to hire a car.

As for american bike advice, i dont know.
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[EuropeanNC30R...]

I've heard of someone on visordown organised it so he bought a bike from a U.S. shop and used their address for insurance etc, then sold it back afterwards. This is the best way I've heard of doing it, otherwise it would be a right ball-ache to do assuming you want to stay legal.

I would say hire but at 18, no chance.

[ogre142]

[EuropeanNC30R...]

Well obviously you aren't going to have an address, as you don't live there, so you'll need a friendly US address.

Best go over to visordown.com and get googling/asking questions.

[AJI]

Didn't see this thread so apologies if I'm a bit late with info, but first a question:

What's your journey going to be like? Point to point, or go around in a big circle and end up where you started? This info is necessary whether you're hiring or buying. If you're buying a bike then the comment earlier about selling it back to where you bought it seems sensible. If you're going point to point I don't think it'd work though, can't see a dealer letting you register a bike at their address and let you ride off across the country with it.

I faced the same problem last year. Me and a few friends did Route 66 in a car. Originally, we were going to buy one (Top Gear stylee) in Chicago and then sell it at the end of the four week holiday in LA. Budget of about $3k and even if we sold it for half that we'd still get some money back, which is more than can be said of hiring.

Unfortunately, there's too much red tape to buy really. You need an address to register the licence plate to (even second hand cars come unlicenced in the States, the plate stays with you from car to car). Insurance would be steep without permanent residence too, and then if you crashed or broke down it'd be a hell of a lot more difficult than if you'd just rented something. In the end we just rented an SUV.

But again, I think that mightn't be easy if you're under 21, for you getting a bike or your friends getting a car. Most companies don't accept under 21s and virtually all of them have a hefty surplus charge if you're under 25 (we rented a different car 3 weeks through and the nice lady at the desk waived the under 25 charge though ). Also, there's usually a one-way charge too, if your pick-up and drop-off points are different.

On a more positive note, if you still go ahead with the trip and you'd like more info on some of the places I went on the Route I'd be happy to enlighten you
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[Phoenix]

Can't help with the whole buying a vehicle idea and selling it at the end of the holiday, but it sounds daft to me. Topgear managed it because it's Topgear, for a normal person it's really quite unrealistic due to no residence, registering the vehicle the cost of insurance the length of time you'd be there and the hassle of buying and selling.

Hiring a bike I'm not even sure you'd be able to do until your 25. Cars you can often hire from 18 in the states but the daily surcharge for drivers under 21 is immense, if it's $30 a day to rent the surcharge would probably be another $30 a day. There's another surcharge for drivers under 25 but it's not as severe. The other problem as mentioned is one way rentals. To rent a car from Florida for example and drop it off in California will cost you significantly in one way rental fees, it'd be in the hundreds of dollars.

Generally I think unless you're absolutely loaded it's an unrealistic idea to do it at your age, oh and you might also have trouble if the vehicle hirers have not held their licence for at least a year.