Sandy leads to Thanksgiving rental car shortage

Car rental companies were hesitant to speak about their own losses but Avis Budget Group Inc. says it removed from service 2 percent of its fleet from Philadelphia to Connecticut. The company did not respond to repeated requests to clarify how many cars that was.

Outside of the holiday rush, car rental companies say there are enough vehicles available for drivers. Here's what they did to ensure a large enough fleet:

— Hertz held on to older vehicles that were scheduled to be sold. It also brought in extra cars and even rented trailers and generators to keep open some locations destroyed by the storm.

— Avis Budget brought in 6,000 extra cars from elsewhere in the country.

— Enterprise Holdings — which owns Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car — moved 17,000 cars to the Northeast region from other parts of the country. Another 10,000 brand new cars, slated for other states, were instead redirected to New York and New Jersey.

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Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott.