Renting a car in US with a BC N license?

March 15, 2015 8:51 AM

My partner and I are both in our 30's, but BC has graduated licensing and we still have our N (novice) licenses in BC. Have you or anyone you know ever successfully rented a car in the US with a Canadian graduated license? Or tried and been unsuccessful?

I know that some Canadian car rental companies allow N drivers to rent cars, others don't. But no one we know has ever tried to rent in the US. Our vacation plans are going to hinge on this, so we'd like to get some reassurance before we book everything. Thanks!

posted by 100kb to Travel & Transportation (4 answers total)

It looks like it'll run you about CAD$67 + time and effort to take the road test ($50) and upgrade your license ($17) to the full license. Is that an option to consider, especially if you consider it part of the cost of the trip?
posted by Sunburnt at 10:16 AM on March 15, 2015

Response by poster: Unfortunately neither of us qualify to take the full license test yet, and in our area it's so hard that most people fail the first couple times. So it would take significant practice as well, which we don't have time for.
posted by 100kb at 11:00 AM on March 15, 2015

Car rental companies give their individual locations a fair bit of latitude on things like age limits and driving records, so your best bet may well be to simply phone the specific location you're thinking of renting from and ask them. Even asking Budget's central office or Hertz's customer service line isn't necessarily going to get you the right answer for the place you actually intend to rent from.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:24 PM on March 15, 2015

Response by poster: As a followup, for anyone who might be googling this in the future: the rental agent looked at our licenses for about 5 seconds, didn't ask about about the N restrictions or anything else. Probably most US rental agents have no clue what the Canadian systems are, and will just ignore it because the license looks like a regular license. This was in Las Vegas, so they probably get a fair number of international travellers too.
posted by 100kb at 6:27 AM on May 15, 2015