Some rental cars near airport being shipped out

There are still 14,000 cars with no place to go

Some of the thousands of idled rental cars currently jam-packed on empty fields around Kahului Airport are being shipped out-of-state, a process that airport officials say is normally employed during slow times of the year.

The unprecedented slow times are the result of COVID-19, which has temporarily halted tourism and visitor arrivals and caused parked rental cars to collect dust.

"There is a reduction in rental cars, and some are being shipped back to the Mainland," Maui Airports District Manager Marvin Moniz said Thursday morning. "A lot of these cars get shipped here for the holidays every year for the peak seasons -- Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year, sometimes spring break. They'll ship cars here just to accommodate those peaks and then when those peaks or heavy holiday seasons are over, they ship the cars back."

The particular rental companies and the total amounts shipped out were not available.

Typically, inventory increases during the busy times of the year and then decreases, Moniz said. Now that cars are parked en masse in the empty fields, such changes are more noticeable.

There are currently about 14,000 rental cars idle on Maui; the island totaled more than 20,000 rental cars before the start of the pandemic, Moniz said. Some cars are being stored elsewhere, including at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.

While the reduction in rental car fleets usually are due to seasonal rotation, some used vehicles are sometimes sold for reduced prices after two to four years through programs, such as a recent one at Hertz Car Sales. Hertz filed for Chapter 11 financial protection last month.

"For years, they've had that, they'll keep a car for so many years and then they take it out of the fleet and then they sell it," Moniz said. "They continue to have their car sales operations, but none of the cars that are currently here are going just to that, just because they're not being rented, just the ones that time out after a few years."

Kahului Airport and rental companies are not anticipating a "big boom" in out-of-state visitors and rental car use when trans-Pacific travel reopens Aug. 1 without quarantine if flyers get pre-tested and are found to be negative for COVID-19.

Interisland travel without quarantine resumed June 16.

"I think overall with the situation globally, we'll probably start off a little bit slow, and we don't see a huge spike coming until after the new year," Moniz said. "We'll keep what's sufficient for the bookings that will carry us through the holidays.

"There may be a lot of dead car batteries when it's time to start them."

* Dakota Grossman can be reached at dgrossman@mauinews.com.