UHaul rentals are painful, but Home Depot has a truck rental program that is relatively painless if you can deal with the no reservations policy. I've done some fairly substantial remodel projects without owning a truck.

I rented one last fall, and they have a mostly electronic pick up and return process now. The biggest delay was getting the keys when I went to the gas station to get the van. I waited ~5 minutes in line for the cashier, and then she had to call somebody from the back.

The return was easy.. just take a few pics on my phone as part of their return process, and then drop the keys in a drop box.

Zipcar used to have cargo vans. Not sure if they still do (don't use them anymore).

But I haven't had a terrible experience at UHaul, as long as you go to one of their big locations. (I always go to this location in Chicago: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8543365,-87.6406812,3a,75y,1... , even if it's not the closest, it's easy enough to get to and they don't run out of stuff...)

So bad--it boggles my mind. We joke that their company moto is: "U-Haul: It's Always Somthing".

So many instances of showing up after reserving online, and the staff says, "Uh, we don't have that truck."

Most recently, my friends couldn't get their reserved truck (on their moving day) because their site (and backend) was down nationwide. They had the truck, but _because_ everything's digital now, they had no fallback ability to rent out the reserved truck.

Fair, it's been a few years since I rented one. It still works better than a truck in most cases since it protects your stuff from rain, car exhaust, mud splashes etc.

In Seattle, there's a good chance it takes an hour to go pick up your friend's pickup.