The Toll Bell Rings
Tolls are expensive when you can't pay them yourself.
While in Oklahoma, we made a joke that the rental company would charge us an absorbent fee for the $1.50 toll road we took twice. That fee has arrived - so let's break it down.
The Actual Toll
On the first pass of the toll, we were heading from Dallas to Fort Sill, and we triggered the entry and exit tolls at 10:01:42 PM and 10:03:04 PM respectively. This cost us $2.00 and $1.50, for a total of $3.50.
On the way back to Dallas from Fort Sill, we triggered the entry toll at 10:11:41 AM and the exit toll at 10:13:03 AM, for $1.50 and $2.00 respectively.
We spent less than 3 minutes on toll roads and ended up paying $7.00 for the privilege.
The Real Toll
Enterprise really helped us out though - they made it really easy for me to pay - just, like, a lot more.
Enterprise charges a total of $4.95 per day that you use a toll road. This is on-top of the toll fee charged by the state. So by traveling through the toll on two different days (the way in, and the way out) they were able to charge us $9.90 on top of the $7.00 fee.
Our 3 minute toll road now cost us a total of $16.90, or $5.63 per minute. Over 50% of the cost of using the toll goes to Enterprise and not the state, where the money is arguably better served (although maybe not in Oklahoma.)
I did it wrong?
The correct way to avoid this fee is to follow one of these steps:
- Avoid routes with tolls.
- Stop and pay your toll directly.
- Use your own TollPass transponder.
I probably could have avoided toll routes - that's valid. But it's not something I've typically thought about in the past when traveling. I also wrongly assumed we could stop and pay when I realized it had tolls.
I don't live in an area that has regular tolls, nor do I drive enough to warrant a TollPass, so option 3 wasn't in the cards for me.
We did try and pay the tolls as we went through them - but Oklahoma has moved to a PlatePay system which means there was no place to stop and pay!
The Rental Loophole
I believe that this loophole needs fixed and states need to pay more attention to the revenue being generated on their toll roads by for-profit 3rd-party companies like Enterprise (and every other rental company, to be fair.)
Stopping and paying your own toll is no longer an option in many areas that have moved to PlatePay only - which further tilts the situation in the favor of Enterprise and similar car rental companies.
With PlatePlay on rental cars, you are essentially forced to either completely avoid tolls or pay the extortion absorbent fees to your rental car company. At least it's capped, eh?