How To Rent a Campervan for $1 Per Day

During our epic road trip through Queensland, we decided to we wanted to rent a campervan in order to have the flexibility to travel wherever we wanted in Australia’s stunning sunshine state.

Travelling a place as varied and large as Queensland, you definitely need a car to get off the beaten path and into the countryside where the State’s true natural beauty really shines through.

Beautiful Queensland coastline

Australia isn’t cheap though, and the thought of having to spend $100 a day for a campervan was very much outside of our budget for this leg of our trip especially considering we still had to budget for petrol, food, etc. We had heard about a service while in New Zealand where travellers could relocate rental cars and campervans for companies to major rental depots in exchange for cheap daily rental rates. When I say cheap, I mean cheap! With rental vehicle returns you can pay as little as $1 per day, with some companies even offering additional incentives like petrol rebates!

How Does It Work?

Since many travellers will rent a car or campervan for popular one-way routes like Sydney to Brisbane or Cairns, rental companies need to get their cars back to their big hubs. Transporting the car back can be costly and cumbersome for the company to do on its own; that’s where vehicle relocations come in.

As a budget traveller this is a godsend! You can get around an expensive country like Australia or New Zealand potentially very cheaply. At the same time, it is very much a win for the company as well as they don’t have to pay to relocate the vehicle themselves.

On both the aggregators and rental company sites, they’ll list availability by vehicle type, pickup and drop off location, number of travel days & kilometres permitted, petrol reimbursement (if any) and finally price per day. The price will range anywhere from $1 to $20 per day depending on the vehicle and company but there are many options in the $1 – $5AUD per day realm.

Most companies post their relocations weeks in advance however some will post with only a few days notice so even if your dates aren’t up when you first start planning keep checking back often. You can even register for notifications based on your expected travel dates and route.

Example of relocation page from Imoova.com

Where to Find a Campervan for $1 Per Day

Most rental companies have a section on their website which lists current relocations needed. A site that will save you time by aggregating different rental company relocations for you and the one we’ve used personally with good success is Imoova. This site is constantly updated with new listings from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America.

Companies Offering Relocations

Relocation Aggregators

Enjoy stunning views like this from the comfort of your campervan

How Much Money Did We Save?

By relocating a campervan through Spaceship Rentals from Cairns to Brisbane over a period of 7 days we saved somewhere in the realm of $600 to $700 AUD based on what the current rate for campervans were at the time plus another $100 in petrol reimbursement after we submitted our receipts.

That massive cash savings allowed us to really explore Queensland without worrying about breaking the bank!

So there you have it, another tool to help save you money and travel longer!

Hope you’ve enjoyed learning how to rent a campervan for $1 per day! If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and as always if you found this useful please like and share this.