The Liability of Rental Cars: A Cautionary Tale

As I sat down to write this article, I couldn't help but think about the importance of understanding the liability involved in renting out a vehicle. It's a topic that may seem straightforward at first glance, but as we'll see, it can quickly become a complex web of issues that can lead to costly consequences.

The situation began with a rental car company that decided to rent out a salvage-rebuilt Cadillac to a customer. The car had been repaired after a crash, and the rental company was aware that it was still under warranty. However, instead of obtaining the proper insurance coverage for the vehicle, the rental company simply assumed that the customer would be responsible for any damage caused by the vehicle.

I recall thinking to myself, "What could possibly go wrong?" But, as we'll see, there were several factors at play that ultimately led to a very unpleasant situation. The first issue was the lack of insurance coverage for the vehicle. Since it wasn't properly insured, the rental company couldn't have any recourse if the car was damaged in an accident.

As the story unfolded, it became clear that the customer had been renting the car with the intention of driving it extensively. In fact, he took a straight shot down I-35 in Dallas, which is not exactly known for its speed limits or traffic safety. The car ultimately crashed, and the rental company was left to deal with the aftermath.

But here's the thing: the rental company had inserted an entire other insurance policy into the situation without realizing it. By lending the car to the customer, they had assumed liability for any damage caused by the vehicle. This meant that they were responsible not only for their own insurance policies but also for any claims made by the customer.

The situation quickly escalated from there. The rental company found themselves in a heated dispute with the customer over who was at fault for the accident. Meanwhile, the dealership that had sold the car to the rental company was also trying to claim ownership of the vehicle, which only added to the chaos.

As I watched this unfold on video, I couldn't help but think about how easily things could have been avoided if the rental company had just taken a few simple precautions. They should have registered the car properly in their company name, insured it as a rental vehicle, and made sure that they had a clear understanding of the terms of the rental agreement.

But instead, they chose to ignore these basic steps and hope for the best. And that's exactly what happened - the best didn't happen. The customer was left with a damaged car, the dealership was left trying to claim ownership of the vehicle, and the rental company found themselves in a costly dispute over who was at fault.

The Takeaway: Insurance Policies Matter

This story serves as a stark reminder of the importance of having proper insurance coverage when renting out a vehicle. It's not just about obtaining liability coverage; it's also about ensuring that you have adequate insurance policies in place to protect yourself and your business.

If you're considering renting out a car, make sure you do your due diligence. Register the vehicle properly in your company name, insure it as a rental vehicle, and take the time to understand the terms of the rental agreement. These simple steps can help prevent costly disputes down the line.

And remember, when things go wrong - which they inevitably will - having proper insurance coverage can be the difference between financial ruin and being able to move forward with minimal disruption.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlook you like every different direction you look on this one it's a hot mess all right over 52 percent of guys deal with some form of ed and most guys go untreated because they don't want to deal with it they're embarrassed by it right but you have to realize it affects more than just them it affects their partner as well and now that it's 2022 and the kit in the gym and the resolutions are all coming in it's probably time to also deal with that because it's a much larger part of your life than you care to admit and that's where today's video sponsor roman is here to help roman is a digital health clinic for men roman provides effective fda approved treatments for ed treatment with the roman platform is super convenient it allows you to be evaluated diagnosed and received treatment all from the comfort of your own home the initial online visit and all follow-ups are free and you'll always get free two-day shipping shipping is always discrete and et treatments start at just two dollars a dose all treatments depend on gaining a prescription after a medical evaluation by a doctor or nurse practitioner on the roman platform so visit getroman.com ssr i put a link right below in the description if prescribed you're going to save 15 off your first order to get you started 2022 it's the year of the new you the goodyou and you can do that by visiting getroman.com ssr all right guys this is a good one and this is essentially telling you why it's a bad idea to rent out exotic cars because everybody's like oh it's great dude's making money hand over fist everything is always well and good until something goes wrong right whether you have the right insurance the wrong insurance whether it's your car whether you're borrowed whether it's a personal lease whatever the situation is when you give somebody a car they give you money and then they bring it back it's a huge win then there's a situations where they don't really bring it back in the condition it was supposed to come back in and that's when everything hits the fan and today's video is going to bring you down to i believe it's dallas texas dallas texas and alan martinez picked this one up because he sent it over to me that he saw this which is a lamborghini huracan spider which is on the ground and it appears that the front wheel has been filed down from being driven without a tire see simple as that right that's the only way that starts to look like that then he got curious and said okay i have no context i see a lamborghini with the wheel file down on it and bumper damage where did this start like like because that doesn't happen in 50 feet right that happens in like watching police chase they shoot out tire and then the guy's driving 43 miles down the road that's what the wheel looks like so alan traced this all the way back to the accident scene and that's where we're gonna pick this up so if you notice there's a bunch of impact damage right here so you can see the curb and there's little shards of black everywhere he hit this curb and he launched over the grass over the embankment this tire marks he lands right here you can see all the undertray there's bits of under tray everywhere and he can't steer it so he goes back up into the embankment right here and he hits this oops hits this misses this pole back to the embankment now he's going the wrong way this is where harry hines holds in the field you can so he's he's losing a lot of oil now you can see and he turns it right back up you follow all these turns it right back up as you follow these marks it starts going up this way and i'm going to get in the car we're going to follow those marks and i'm going to show you how he made it back to where the crescent is right here the huge detour he took through downtown so as the crow flies it turns out that he was only i don't know a couple hundred yards away from where he was supposed to be or where his his end destination was but he decided to either be lost drunk i don't know what the story is but he drove this car and alan ended up tracing from because obviously you don't have a tire you're leaving marks the entire way it's like dropping those breadcrumbs and he traced this accident all the way back and the guy drove over a mile after he jumped the curb crossed over came back et cetera et cetera and it's parked right there and you're starting to piece together who does this right and i'll just get this out of the way this entire thing is a hot soup sandwich and what do i mean by hot soup sandwich take a sandwich take some hot soup pour it on it it's unrecognizable like did the soup brew in the sandwich the sandwich ruined the soup who knows it just nobody wants to have anything to do with it it's just a hot mess and you look and you're like i don't want to touch that that's what this is and this just gets weirder and weirder and deeper and deeper as we go into it and i'm going to be completely honest as far as everything that i'm relaying to you is either video that's been supplied to me from alan photos from alan or screenshots or whatever from from conversations having to do with this post now i don't know the ownership of the vehicles i don't know like everything that's being relayed to me and that i'm relaying to you is not first-hand information so if it isn't accurate this is what i have to go on this is uh let's just say uh educated guesses and uh that is where we're making our assumptions from and we're going to operate on that basis so fast forward it turns out surprise surprise car was a rental was boss exotic car sales and rentals now to be fair these two don't really go together like you would think that and this is my opinion that a rental car company and a sales company shouldn't go together because people look at rental cars and have a lower value on them right like i'm not going to pay that for that car now when you're renting and selling cars in the same place you can only assume that the entire inventory is now tainted by rental car and that's why it's really weird but that also if you look at it he's also got the consignment cars and then rent your own car so you see the cars on the website you see them both for sale and some of them are for rental and you start to see that this black lamborghini is not on there so you start to think all right what what happened here like where is this car it could be a consignment car and the vin number was obviously visible uh alan posted the vin number so people can be aware of the history of the car but also in the photo i saw a hard dealer plate on the car which is just not good news right if you're running a rental car company you have to assume that you have rental insurance i don't know if he does or not that's beside the fact and like i don't want to be anywhere near this insurance claim in any which way because the car is not being driven as a registered car it's being driven on a hard dealer plate not a temp tag but a hard dealer plate which is only designed for people that work for the dealer to move cars from point a to point b it's not designed for the guy's wife to drive it around all day it's a common thing that people that own dealerships or use car dealerships they drive around on dealer tags all the time and just pretend like everything is good it's not it's not supposed to you're not supposed to have personal use with a dealer tag you're supposed to have your own vehicles registered and when you're driving a vehicle if you want to drive a home no big deal they work off all of all of this gray area what you can't justify though is that this car was being rented to somebody on a dealer tag that a hard dealer tag that is pretty much a big no-no because the dealer's insurance that you have to have with that tag isn't going to cover a thing right then you fast forward to the fact that the car is now damaged who knows about the guy who's so responsible in his decision making that he jumps the curb plays around in the grass drives a mile and a half 15 different ways from sunday to try to try to find his way back well i don't know if you've ever heard a car driving on metal right it's horrendous like the noise is like a banshee you would not want to hear this thing so for this guy to even pretend like he had no idea he was either drugged out of his mind i don't know what would prompt somebody to do this this is astonishing to me that there's not a tick tock video of somebody seeing this going down the road sparking its way down and that didn't end up on the internet somewhere that's beside the fact so this guy damaged the car i can't imagine his insurance is the best right like i maybe it is maybe it isn't would his insurance cover something like that they cover an accident right so like he spun out hit a curb they would cover that accident but after that he's done so much more damage to the car that's now is that a second accident there's a third accident an accident stops when you come to rest so like say you um you were in a parking lot and you bumped into somebody right whoa bumped into you that's an accident right not like oh you get out of the car you look at it and then you're running to somebody else that's a second accident it's not like well they happened in the same place the same day it's two separate accidents and that's something that the insurance company may not cover all the extra damage they may consider that just straight negligence on the part of the insured like and they may not cover anything like look we'll cover the wheel and the bumper but we're not covering the oil pan getting ripped off the car because you drove it and then the engine seizes up whatever the situation is that car is beyond total but also and again this is not first-hand information i read that this guy is renting out and i don't know if this was even his car or not renting out salvaged cars he buys salvaged cars and then rents them out that's to me a big no-no a lot of people do it because they get it cheaper and and they can rent it out and then when somebody crashes ooh i get a lot of money when i make the insurance claim but at the end of the day i don't like the liability of that i don't like the liability of taking a salvage rebuild if it was fixed cheaply if they put the wrong part on it oh yeah we just grabbed an r8 control arm instead of the lambo control arm and now the the camber on the wheel is off or whatever the situation is it's sitting different because it's like three millimeters shorter any attorney can just jump at that be like that's not a factory part that doesn't belong on there and that's the reason the car crashed because the handling was off i don't touch that it's just it's nonsense and i stay away from it but here you have a situation where it could have been a consignment car and a guy could have said like yeah rent out my car so now you're inserting an entire other insurance policy which is the guy who owns the car if it even has insurance on it which it probably doesn't because if he gave it to the dealership on consignment or to rent it and then it was on a dealer tag that would technically fall under the dealer's insurance which doesn't cover rentals so there's either going to be insurance fraud or i don't know like this is just such a high every s look you like every different direction you look on this one it's a hot mess and this guy went on like a straight rampage down in dallas in this car i don't know what was going on i don't know any story behind this i didn't try to reach out to kyle or anything like that that's not the purpose of this this is just teaching you what happens that somebody and it may be the guy who owns the car who says hey uh rental company i gave you the car it got crashed what are you gonna do for me i'm sorry there's no insurance the guy's insurance isn't going to cover it i'm not covering it like here's half of the rental amount you may run into that you may run into the like i don't know what the net result is but when insurance starts not covering stuff and everybody starts fighting over whose fault it is it gets real ugly real quick and that's what you have to remember that's why it's so important i see a lot of people just like oh yeah it's great to i'll you mind renting my car for me well sure i can do that but i have to take ownership of the car it's got to be registered in my company name and on top of that it's got to be insured as a rental car then it's all good then you are a lien holder on your asset which is registered to my company which is now being insured that's part of a business move but to be like hey just i've got a lease through a bank who who knows if this car is owned or leased or whatever whether it's salvage not salvage i don't know the ownership of it but it just all of this turned into a really bad situation i could be completely wrong right this could be the easiest insurance claim the guy could have the cadillac of insurance policies they could have already written a check for 400 000 to make this right but i don't think that's the case i think this is a little sloppier here uh i think the insurance company may have an issue with with some things like if the rental agreement was even valid because it's not being rented it's being borrowed so that should go on the other guy's insurance because like you're lending a car to this guy it's it's it's a mess so when you think about renting your car when you this is why you do things right this is why you make sure you register your car properly in the name of the rental company that's renting it out that's insured as a rental car because if stuff goes sideways you want to have that insurance you want to have that backup because right now there's so many potential parties involved here it could be a complete mess rob ferretti thank you for watching dallas i should i should have been wearing my cowboy hat for this one uh hot mess if anything of substance comes out of this i will make a follow-up video if nothing of substance comes out i will pin the comment when i find out more details as to what happened ultimately but this is just a waste of a car and a gentle reminder that it's very important to pay attention right to what you're doing when you're trying to run a business because when things do go sideways is when everything falls apart and everybody starts arguing with each other and there's just the lawyers are the only ones who ultimately make money at that point rob ferretti see you tomorrow youlook you like every different direction you look on this one it's a hot mess all right over 52 percent of guys deal with some form of ed and most guys go untreated because they don't want to deal with it they're embarrassed by it right but you have to realize it affects more than just them it affects their partner as well and now that it's 2022 and the kit in the gym and the resolutions are all coming in it's probably time to also deal with that because it's a much larger part of your life than you care to admit and that's where today's video sponsor roman is here to help roman is a digital health clinic for men roman provides effective fda approved treatments for ed treatment with the roman platform is super convenient it allows you to be evaluated diagnosed and received treatment all from the comfort of your own home the initial online visit and all follow-ups are free and you'll always get free two-day shipping shipping is always discrete and et treatments start at just two dollars a dose all treatments depend on gaining a prescription after a medical evaluation by a doctor or nurse practitioner on the roman platform so visit getroman.com ssr i put a link right below in the description if prescribed you're going to save 15 off your first order to get you started 2022 it's the year of the new you the goodyou and you can do that by visiting getroman.com ssr all right guys this is a good one and this is essentially telling you why it's a bad idea to rent out exotic cars because everybody's like oh it's great dude's making money hand over fist everything is always well and good until something goes wrong right whether you have the right insurance the wrong insurance whether it's your car whether you're borrowed whether it's a personal lease whatever the situation is when you give somebody a car they give you money and then they bring it back it's a huge win then there's a situations where they don't really bring it back in the condition it was supposed to come back in and that's when everything hits the fan and today's video is going to bring you down to i believe it's dallas texas dallas texas and alan martinez picked this one up because he sent it over to me that he saw this which is a lamborghini huracan spider which is on the ground and it appears that the front wheel has been filed down from being driven without a tire see simple as that right that's the only way that starts to look like that then he got curious and said okay i have no context i see a lamborghini with the wheel file down on it and bumper damage where did this start like like because that doesn't happen in 50 feet right that happens in like watching police chase they shoot out tire and then the guy's driving 43 miles down the road that's what the wheel looks like so alan traced this all the way back to the accident scene and that's where we're gonna pick this up so if you notice there's a bunch of impact damage right here so you can see the curb and there's little shards of black everywhere he hit this curb and he launched over the grass over the embankment this tire marks he lands right here you can see all the undertray there's bits of under tray everywhere and he can't steer it so he goes back up into the embankment right here and he hits this oops hits this misses this pole back to the embankment now he's going the wrong way this is where harry hines holds in the field you can so he's he's losing a lot of oil now you can see and he turns it right back up you follow all these turns it right back up as you follow these marks it starts going up this way and i'm going to get in the car we're going to follow those marks and i'm going to show you how he made it back to where the crescent is right here the huge detour he took through downtown so as the crow flies it turns out that he was only i don't know a couple hundred yards away from where he was supposed to be or where his his end destination was but he decided to either be lost drunk i don't know what the story is but he drove this car and alan ended up tracing from because obviously you don't have a tire you're leaving marks the entire way it's like dropping those breadcrumbs and he traced this accident all the way back and the guy drove over a mile after he jumped the curb crossed over came back et cetera et cetera and it's parked right there and you're starting to piece together who does this right and i'll just get this out of the way this entire thing is a hot soup sandwich and what do i mean by hot soup sandwich take a sandwich take some hot soup pour it on it it's unrecognizable like did the soup brew in the sandwich the sandwich ruined the soup who knows it just nobody wants to have anything to do with it it's just a hot mess and you look and you're like i don't want to touch that that's what this is and this just gets weirder and weirder and deeper and deeper as we go into it and i'm going to be completely honest as far as everything that i'm relaying to you is either video that's been supplied to me from alan photos from alan or screenshots or whatever from from conversations having to do with this post now i don't know the ownership of the vehicles i don't know like everything that's being relayed to me and that i'm relaying to you is not first-hand information so if it isn't accurate this is what i have to go on this is uh let's just say uh educated guesses and uh that is where we're making our assumptions from and we're going to operate on that basis so fast forward it turns out surprise surprise car was a rental was boss exotic car sales and rentals now to be fair these two don't really go together like you would think that and this is my opinion that a rental car company and a sales company shouldn't go together because people look at rental cars and have a lower value on them right like i'm not going to pay that for that car now when you're renting and selling cars in the same place you can only assume that the entire inventory is now tainted by rental car and that's why it's really weird but that also if you look at it he's also got the consignment cars and then rent your own car so you see the cars on the website you see them both for sale and some of them are for rental and you start to see that this black lamborghini is not on there so you start to think all right what what happened here like where is this car it could be a consignment car and the vin number was obviously visible uh alan posted the vin number so people can be aware of the history of the car but also in the photo i saw a hard dealer plate on the car which is just not good news right if you're running a rental car company you have to assume that you have rental insurance i don't know if he does or not that's beside the fact and like i don't want to be anywhere near this insurance claim in any which way because the car is not being driven as a registered car it's being driven on a hard dealer plate not a temp tag but a hard dealer plate which is only designed for people that work for the dealer to move cars from point a to point b it's not designed for the guy's wife to drive it around all day it's a common thing that people that own dealerships or use car dealerships they drive around on dealer tags all the time and just pretend like everything is good it's not it's not supposed to you're not supposed to have personal use with a dealer tag you're supposed to have your own vehicles registered and when you're driving a vehicle if you want to drive a home no big deal they work off all of all of this gray area what you can't justify though is that this car was being rented to somebody on a dealer tag that a hard dealer tag that is pretty much a big no-no because the dealer's insurance that you have to have with that tag isn't going to cover a thing right then you fast forward to the fact that the car is now damaged who knows about the guy who's so responsible in his decision making that he jumps the curb plays around in the grass drives a mile and a half 15 different ways from sunday to try to try to find his way back well i don't know if you've ever heard a car driving on metal right it's horrendous like the noise is like a banshee you would not want to hear this thing so for this guy to even pretend like he had no idea he was either drugged out of his mind i don't know what would prompt somebody to do this this is astonishing to me that there's not a tick tock video of somebody seeing this going down the road sparking its way down and that didn't end up on the internet somewhere that's beside the fact so this guy damaged the car i can't imagine his insurance is the best right like i maybe it is maybe it isn't would his insurance cover something like that they cover an accident right so like he spun out hit a curb they would cover that accident but after that he's done so much more damage to the car that's now is that a second accident there's a third accident an accident stops when you come to rest so like say you um you were in a parking lot and you bumped into somebody right whoa bumped into you that's an accident right not like oh you get out of the car you look at it and then you're running to somebody else that's a second accident it's not like well they happened in the same place the same day it's two separate accidents and that's something that the insurance company may not cover all the extra damage they may consider that just straight negligence on the part of the insured like and they may not cover anything like look we'll cover the wheel and the bumper but we're not covering the oil pan getting ripped off the car because you drove it and then the engine seizes up whatever the situation is that car is beyond total but also and again this is not first-hand information i read that this guy is renting out and i don't know if this was even his car or not renting out salvaged cars he buys salvaged cars and then rents them out that's to me a big no-no a lot of people do it because they get it cheaper and and they can rent it out and then when somebody crashes ooh i get a lot of money when i make the insurance claim but at the end of the day i don't like the liability of that i don't like the liability of taking a salvage rebuild if it was fixed cheaply if they put the wrong part on it oh yeah we just grabbed an r8 control arm instead of the lambo control arm and now the the camber on the wheel is off or whatever the situation is it's sitting different because it's like three millimeters shorter any attorney can just jump at that be like that's not a factory part that doesn't belong on there and that's the reason the car crashed because the handling was off i don't touch that it's just it's nonsense and i stay away from it but here you have a situation where it could have been a consignment car and a guy could have said like yeah rent out my car so now you're inserting an entire other insurance policy which is the guy who owns the car if it even has insurance on it which it probably doesn't because if he gave it to the dealership on consignment or to rent it and then it was on a dealer tag that would technically fall under the dealer's insurance which doesn't cover rentals so there's either going to be insurance fraud or i don't know like this is just such a high every s look you like every different direction you look on this one it's a hot mess and this guy went on like a straight rampage down in dallas in this car i don't know what was going on i don't know any story behind this i didn't try to reach out to kyle or anything like that that's not the purpose of this this is just teaching you what happens that somebody and it may be the guy who owns the car who says hey uh rental company i gave you the car it got crashed what are you gonna do for me i'm sorry there's no insurance the guy's insurance isn't going to cover it i'm not covering it like here's half of the rental amount you may run into that you may run into the like i don't know what the net result is but when insurance starts not covering stuff and everybody starts fighting over whose fault it is it gets real ugly real quick and that's what you have to remember that's why it's so important i see a lot of people just like oh yeah it's great to i'll you mind renting my car for me well sure i can do that but i have to take ownership of the car it's got to be registered in my company name and on top of that it's got to be insured as a rental car then it's all good then you are a lien holder on your asset which is registered to my company which is now being insured that's part of a business move but to be like hey just i've got a lease through a bank who who knows if this car is owned or leased or whatever whether it's salvage not salvage i don't know the ownership of it but it just all of this turned into a really bad situation i could be completely wrong right this could be the easiest insurance claim the guy could have the cadillac of insurance policies they could have already written a check for 400 000 to make this right but i don't think that's the case i think this is a little sloppier here uh i think the insurance company may have an issue with with some things like if the rental agreement was even valid because it's not being rented it's being borrowed so that should go on the other guy's insurance because like you're lending a car to this guy it's it's it's a mess so when you think about renting your car when you this is why you do things right this is why you make sure you register your car properly in the name of the rental company that's renting it out that's insured as a rental car because if stuff goes sideways you want to have that insurance you want to have that backup because right now there's so many potential parties involved here it could be a complete mess rob ferretti thank you for watching dallas i should i should have been wearing my cowboy hat for this one uh hot mess if anything of substance comes out of this i will make a follow-up video if nothing of substance comes out i will pin the comment when i find out more details as to what happened ultimately but this is just a waste of a car and a gentle reminder that it's very important to pay attention right to what you're doing when you're trying to run a business because when things do go sideways is when everything falls apart and everybody starts arguing with each other and there's just the lawyers are the only ones who ultimately make money at that point rob ferretti see you tomorrow you\n"