First, you should know that the U-Haul franchise for this business has changed hands a few times…read moreduring the last several years, and there are other listings for this business at other addresses in Lincoln City that show as 'CLOSED". Make certain you're driving to this one, not one of the "CLOSED" locations in Lincoln City.
Second, the building that houses this franchise contains (I believe) six businesses in total. These include a parcel shipping service, an auto repair shop and a feed and tack shop, among others. They are all serviced through the single desk inside the building, and the building space contains quite a jumble of items related to all the different businesses. When you call the number listed here (the same number listed on U-Haul's national website), they answer, "Thank you for calling Happy Trails Feed and Tack", so I'm assuming that is the main focus of all the disparate enterprises there.
Third, the selection of vehicles they offer for rent is mighty sparse. A few larger box vans, a couple of trailers and a pickup truck were on offer when I rented from there recently. As an example, one of U-Haul's most popular vehicles to rent for local moves is a Ford Transit van (or similar-size van), which is easy to drive, just the right size, etc. for most people's needs, and a vehicle I've rented many times from U-Haul or Enterprise. The woman at the desk told me they didn't have one, they've never had one, and never expect to get one, either - she explained they are too small a location to have something like that.
OK, so first the pros:
There's only one, and that's the aforementioned woman that works at the desk, the woman that sets up your rental. Very sweet, very helpful, and most importantly, competent. Loved her, and she is the saving grace for this business.
The cons (let me recount my rental experience):
As mentioned above, I wanted a van, but no van was available, so I had to rent the pickup truck they had, a Ram full-size unit. The pickup truck was very, very dirty inside (caked mud and straw in the footwells, muddy handprints all over the dash and door panels) and more mud all over the bed/tailgate/bumper and had lots of mud spatters everywhere else when I got it. And the bonus of some fast-food wrappers in the cab, too. It had obviously been used hard by whomever had the truck before me, and not cleaned before I rented it. There was no walk-around inspection by the rental agent; she just shrugged and said "sorry" and left it at that. Although, to be fair, there was so much mud all over the truck that it would have been difficult to see any scratches, etc. in a walk-around inspection anyway, so maybe she was just being realistic. She assured me I would not be charged for any of it, so off I went.
I had the truck for 2 hours, covered 7 miles in it, and picked up a small kitchen table that wouldn't fit in my car, and then subsequently unloaded the table at my place. Everything thing on the truck worked fine, it was just really dirty. I turned it in while the counter person (the very nice woman) was still there (before 5 PM) and again, no interaction except that she told me the receipt would be emailed to me "in the next 10 minutes" after some worker logged in the return.
Never happened, and the next day I get an angry call, a accusatory text, and an equally accusatory email from the regional U-Haul in Portland saying they want their truck back, I'm in violation of the contract terms and they have "initiated recovery efforts". Lincoln City never logged the return in, so I was still showing up as having the truck. WTH? So, I call the regional people back, and hours later, Lincoln City finally logs in the return. The regional rep. follows up with me after this by phone and told me the manager of the U-Haul franchise here told her he was "just too busy" to bother with logging in any of the vehicles that were returned the day before, and she apologised on his behalf.
The summing up is that the truck I rented was dirty and kind of beat up, the staff (excluding the woman at the desk) is wholly inattentive and wildly disorganized, their process is chaotic, they exposed me to reputation risk and possible legal action from their corporate parent, I mean, it was just a really bad experience stretching over 2 days. For a 2-hour rental!
Would I rent from these people again? Well, there is no other option in Lincoln City, THEY ARE IT, so I guess the answer is yes, but I certainly don't trust them to do the basic stuff they're supposed to do regarding a rental, and that's a definitely a problem, right?
