This past weekend, I rented a Kawasaki ZX-4RR to ferry me around Boston for a wedding. I wrote up the experience of riding Baby’s First Four-Cylinder, but all you in the comments had questions about something else entirely: How the hell did I rent a sport-ish bike, sight unseen, and get to just ride it around unrestricted? Was this some sort of moto journo job perk, some loaner given to me by the kind folks at Kawasaki that I failed to disclose?
Nope! It was a regular old rental, paid for from my own wallet. As it turns out, there are plenty of Turo-style sites that are more than happy to let you rent other people’s bikes when you’re in town — or rent out yours when you’re away. In fact, having rented from Turo before, I’ll likely seek out one of these other sites first, the next time I need a vehicle to get around after a flight or train.
Moto rental sites
I used a site called Twisted Road for my Boston rental, where the ZX-4RR I rode is still available. The site verifies your license and identity, as well as checking that you’ve had your motorcycle endorsement for more than six months, before it’ll actually let you set off on anyone else’s bike. There’s also plenty of insurance tacked on to your daily cost, as well as a four-figure damage deposit that sits on your credit card for days after you return the bike. For my trip, that all came out to about $180, plus the $2,000 damage waiver that was refunded in full because I’m a perfect sweetie angel and have never done anything wrong in my life.
Twisted Road’s competitor is Riders Share, a site with largely the same function and largely the same selection of bikes — including the ZX-4RR I rented. It operates very similarly — per-day rental rates, deposits, insurance, optional gear — but with slightly different dollar amounts on everything. I actually tried Riders Share first for my weekend rental, looking at the exact same ZX-4RR, but Riders Share came out to be about $20 more expensive. It also came with a $1,000 higher deposit, though that would’ve been returned to me untouched anyway. I went with the cheap one for my purposes, but there’s no guarantee that Twisted Road will always be the cheaper of the two. These Turo-style apps have their own means of estimating risk and charging for insurance, so your mileage may vary.
What about the more traditional option?
There’s an even more established competitor in the world of motorcycle rentals, though. One with a very different business plan: EagleRider, which owns its own bikes and rents them out like a traditional rental agency. The company does offer a peer-to-peer rental marketplace like Twisted Road and Riders Share, but it’s secondary to the primary business of rentals and tours. EagleRider is also different because it allows pickup and dropoff from discrete destinations — you can actually ride from one place to another on one of their bikes, rather than only making round trips.
EagleRider has a more limited selection of makes and models than the peer-to-peer sites, but there’s also a certain quality floor that comes with an actual rental company. Bikes come from affiliated dealer locations, not the parking lot behind someone’s apartment, and the company has a broader selection of gear and accessories to outfit rentals. It’s a trade-off, for sure, but one that some folks will likely be eager to make.
