June 17, 2019—Mitchell recently released its Q2 Industry Trends Report, including a report of the average length of rental (LOR) for repairable vehicles in Q1 2019. The quarterly LOR summary is produced by Dan Friedman, assistant vice president, collision industry relations and sales at Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Regarding the report's U.S. findings: Average Length of Rental (LOR) for Q1 2019 landed at 12.8 days, an increase of 0.3 days compared to Q1 2018. Once again, there was very little consistency between regions and states, suggesting that the quarterly result for the U.S. is not reflective of a genuine national trend.
The Mountain and Pacific regions produced the largest increases at 1.1 and 0.9 days respectively. The Southwest was the only region that did not increase by staying even at 13 days. This follows a decrease of -0.2 days the previous quarter. The average LOR ranged from a high of 14.1 days in the Mountain region to a low of 11.9 days in the Midwest.
At the state level, Rhode Island, Puerto Rico and Colorado were the high-end outliers at 16, 16 and 15.4 days while North Dakota and Iowa produced the lowest numbers at 10.5 days each.
Canada’s average LOR was 13.3 days for Q1 2019. This result was 0.6 days higher than both the 90-day period immediately preceding it (Q4 2018) and the same period last year (Q1 2018), where LOR for each quarter was 12.7 days.
Canada's LOR was a half day longer than the U.S.
Overall, Canada’s Q1 2019 LOR ranged from a low of 10.1 days in Prince Edward Island to a high of 14.1 days in Ontario.
