Car Rental in Red Deer, AB: The best companies

Red Deer is located in central Alberta, midway between Calgary and the Edmonton Corridor. With a population of just over 100.000, it is the county’s third most populous city and home to many people working in the thriving oil and logging industry in the surrounding hills. But Red Deer also serves as a popular base for people visiting the beautiful Canadian Badlands, the mountainous David Thompson Country, and a number of nearby, picturesque towns and villages.

Red Deer, Alberta (Photo: Daniel via Flickr/ CC BY 2.0)

For those looking to explore Red Deer and the area around it, we have compared the various rental car companies on a variety of factors, such as opening hours, available cars and of course, daily rates. Here are our favourites.

Red Deer Regional Airport: Budget

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If you happen to be flying into Red Deer’s regional airport, you’ll find four rental companies there: Budget, Avis, Dollar, and Thrifty. Due to its large selection of vehicles and its bet-ter customer service, we chose Budget as the most recommendable. In the cheap car rental category, you’ll find typical rental runarounds like the Ford Focus and Ford Fiesta but one notch up, they had the Chrysler 200 and the punchy Dodge Charger, both of which were under $40 per day on our sample dates. Opening hours: Monday – Friday 7am – 5pm; Saturday 7am – 12pm; Sunday 8am – 12pm.

Downtown Red Deer: Enterprise

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“Friendly, professional and spanking clean cars” sums up the comments in the customer feedback. Enterprise also scores well on speed of pick ups and drop offs and are a little cheaper than the competition. On our dummy dates, the Chevrolet Spark, Chev-rolet Malibu and Kia Forte were the most economical cars at around $30 per day, while for another $15 a day, you could be driving off into the countryside with a Ford F150 pick up. Open-ing hours: Monday – Friday 8am – 4.30pm; Saturday 9am – 12pm; Sunday closed.

North Red Deer: Avis

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Located just off Gaetz Avenue next to Burger King and McDonalds (useful if you are peckish), we chose Avis as the most recom-mendable agency in the north of Red Deer. With prices as low as $25 per day, the Hyundai Accent and the Hyundai Electra prop up the fleet while SUVs such as the Hyundai Tucson and the Dodge Charger were $40 per day. For fans of Avis, the Avis Preferred award system rewards you with sizeable discounts of rental pric-es, pre-prepared paperwork and priority parking. Opening hours: Monday – Friday 8am – 6pm; Saturday 10am – 5pm; Sunday closed.