Weird things found in rental cars

During my college years, I worked for an attendant for a major car rental company. This involved cleaning and maintaining the vehicles, and shuttling the customers around.

There were a lot of odd customers who walked through our door, and we saw a lot of strange things left in cars. Some of them still boggle my mind.

Roasted Garlic

Photo by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez via Wikipedia. CC Licensed

A catering company had rented a cargo van for an event they were hosting on a Saturday evening. We were closed on Sundays so they decided to return it overnight.

Of course it happened to be the hottest weekend of the year.

We opened it up to inspect it first thing Monday morning, and the smell knocked us out of our boots. A scent so vile, it hung oily in the hot summer's air. They had left an entire plate of roasted garlic festering in the sun all day.

We never did get the smell out. So goes the legend of the Garlic Van. A vehicle so noxious, an army of cardboard pine trees couldn't vanquish it.


Drugs

Photo by Chris Potter, via Flickr. CC Licensed

During one of my days off, a customer came in asking about a bottle of aspirin he had left in his rental. The weekday guy said he hadn't found anything. The customer then flew into a rage, accusing him of stealing it, and stormed out. Yep, we certainly had no shortage of weirdos.

Over the weekend, I was giving the car a once over for the next person. I found the bottle buried in the arm rest. Shaking it, there clearly weren't any pills inside.

I opened it up and found about an ounce of weed inside, along with rolling papers. We thought about calling the customer, but ended up trashing it. I guess we're a bunch of bummers.


Coffin Rollers

Photo by Mr. Choppers, via Wikipedia. CC Licensed

A cemetery was a regular customer of ours. Their truck had broken down so they were renting vans from us for maintenance work. Or so we assumed. A lot of people use them for landscaping and cemeteries have a lot of landscaping. Boy, were we wrong.

We went to do some cleaning after they returned it, and discovered a full set of coffin rollers in the back.

The cemetery had been using our vans to transport bodies from the funeral home to the crematorium. We would have scolded them, but we were just grateful the rollers were the only thing they forgot.


Llamas 

Photo by Gavin Schaefer via Wikipedia, CC licensed

Panel vans always seemed to take more than their fair share of abuse. We had one come back filled with hay and smelling like a barn.

Being in a small town, it's not unusual for farmers to rent them to transport equipment.

The plot thickened when the previous renter's neighbour just happened to stop by. I was outside hosing out the fan when the guy peeks in. "Quite a mess back there," he says. Then he proceeds to tell me his buddy had been using it to transport llamas.

Now, those vans are maybe five feet tall in the back. It's cramped for an adult human. Llamas are pretty big, so I can't imagine it being a comfortable ride for the poor animal.

Some people just don't think things through.

Top photo by Georgraphy UK, CC Licensed

This article originally appeared on BTT News and was written by Micheal Philp (me). This article has been modified to comply with fair use laws.