Car Hire Question

Hello everyone,

I have hired and driven a car many times in Spain but I cannot for the life of me remember what documents the hirer requires when you pick up a car.

I will be sharing the car with my Brother-in-Law and we want to hire it for 3 weeks, the problem is that I arrive in Spain 1 week before him and so will be driving the car solo for a week, the 2nd week he flies out and we will be sharing the driving for a week, I then return home leaving him to drive the car solo for the 3rd week and return the car to the airport.

Do I just need his driving license to name him as the 2nd driver when I pick up the car or do I have to have both driving license and passport? obviously if I need his passport then this is a non starter.

Does he have to be present when the car is picked up, or can I just hand over his driving license?

Does anyone know how this might work in a different format e.g. hire the car at the airport and then go to a local office (or even the desk in the airport) when he arrives and add him as a driver?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Kelju

 From my experience, you just need the second driver's license. You as the hirer remain responsible for the vehicle until it is returned and it is your passport that they will want to see.

Mark

 Thanks for the reply Mark, much appreciated.

Kelju

 I can confirm what Mark has said.  When I hire a car, I always put SWMBO on as an extra driver (just in case I break a leg or something).  She isn't even with me when I do it and I just take her driving licence with me (She waits by the arrival bit whilst I do the long trek across to the Econorent office as they don't charge for an extra driver).

We also had this situation on one occasion when hiring a car.

My sister travelled over & collected the car but the additional driver was arriving the next day.

We were given the option of my sister having the friend's driving licence with her on th eday that she collected the car or the alternative was that when the firend arrived the next day, we could go to the car hire desk & get her added on to the agreement. This would have worked as we were collecting her from the airport.

We took the option of having the driving licence with us on arrival & we didn't have any problems at all.

Noreen 

 Thanks for the replies folks, I think I will just take along the Brother's driving license.

Kelju

It will depend on the car hire company you use and how helpful the rep at airport wants to be.

I used to take my husbands driving licence and a copy of his passport, Record Car hire wanted to see the original passport so when I returned to airport to pick him up I would park in car hire car park and then have to get an amended document completed once he had arrived.  Needless to say I don't recommend this car hire company.

I changed over to Econorent and on the whole I found them better to use.  It did help that on one hire my husband did come out with me so his details were in the system.  After that they never wanted to see the licence and copy passport I carried with me each time.

What? You wouldn't recommend them because they want everything to be legal? Strange!

When i booked my latest hire using PJs Rentacar, we were just asked to produce driving licence on arrival.  I have found this to be the case with most companies. In Ireland we only have a paper version but for UK i would bring both paper and card.

LOL@Bobaol: "(She waits by the arrival bit whilst I do the long trek across to the Econorent office as they don't charge for an extra driver)."

Everytime we rented a car in Spain the second driver was added free, and all they wanted was the second driving license, as the main driver (yours truly) did all the singing, etc, blah!

Best thing is to contact the Hire firm and ask them!