Renting a car as a UT student

The age requirement is where most UT students hit the first wall. Drive865's minimum rental age is 21. If you're a freshman or sophomore and still 19 or 20, you cannot rent from us — or from most other rental companies in Tennessee. This is not unique to Drive865; it's the industry standard. Some Alamo and National locations will rent to 18-year-olds with an even higher young driver surcharge, but 21 is the more common floor.

Renters aged 21–24 pay a young driver surcharge on top of the base rate. The surcharge is disclosed at booking, not at pickup. If you're 21 and doing the math, include it in your budget upfront — see the under-25 car rental guide for the full breakdown on how to budget for it.

Juniors and seniors who are 21 and have a credit card in their own name are full renters. Graduate students are full renters. If you're on your parents' car insurance policy, that coverage typically extends to rental cars for you as a named driver — call the insurer to confirm before booking. This is worth doing once so you're not figuring it out in the parking lot.

The Maryville pickup point is about 20 minutes from UT's main campus via US-129 south. If you don't have a car on campus, you have a few realistic options: Lyft or Uber to Maryville (the ride is typically $15–25 from the main campus area), ask a friend with a car to drop you, or use the Drive865 TYS option (Economy Lot C) if you're arriving at TYS from out of town anyway.

The TYS pickup at Economy Lot C is 25 minutes from campus — also reachable by Lyft/Uber for roughly $20–30 from Knoxville. If you're flying back from a break and renting immediately at the airport, TYS is the obvious choice — the car is in Economy Lot C, you take the shuttle from baggage claim to Stop C-1A, and you drive from the airport directly.

Returning the car follows the same logic in reverse. If your trip ends back in Knoxville, you drop it at the return point, call a Lyft, and you're done. Factor the return ride into your trip cost just like you factored in the pickup ride.

The Tail of the Dragon is 85 minutes from TYS and about 90 minutes from campus via US-129 and Maryville. A Friday afternoon pickup and Sunday evening return gives you two full driving days. The standard Dragon day — pickup Friday, drive the Dragon Saturday, Cherohala Sunday, return Sunday evening — is the most common UT student rental itinerary we see.

Cades Cove is 60 miles from campus, about 70 minutes driving. It's a natural loop that works as a single-day trip with the FJ Cruiser or a weekend overnight in Townsend. Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are also about 45 minutes from campus; the Odyssey makes sense for a group trip.

For pure driving weekends, the BRZ and the Miata are the cars most UT students end up in. Both are manual, both reward skill development, and both are priced at a level where the weekend math works even with the young driver surcharge factored in. The Miata specifically — top-down on the Foothills Parkway with a carful of friends is a memory. Except it only seats two, so plan accordingly.

If your parents are flying into TYS for Parents Weekend, Fall Festival, or any other campus event, a rental car is a natural solution. They pick up from Economy Lot C (or the Maryville location) on arrival, have wheels for the visit, and return before their flight home. The Odyssey handles two parents and loaded cargo; the Supra handles two parents who want to be impressed by East Tennessee on the way to dinner.

UT Parents Weekend typically falls in late October — peak fall color in the Smokies. If you're helping your parents plan the visit, the FJ Cruiser for Cades Cove or the Miata for Foothills Parkway are additions worth pitching. The scenic drive from TYS through Maryville and into the Smokies takes 60 minutes and is one of the better drives in the country in October.

If you're the student picking up the car for your parents' visit (you're 21+, they're the out-of-town guests), be clear that the rental agreement is in your name and you're the primary driver on record. Your parents can be added as additional drivers if they're driving the car — just list them on the reservation.

Moving in at the beginning of the school year or moving out at the end is one of the most practical use cases for a rental. The NV Passenger 12-seat van is the high-capacity option — three rows of seating plus cargo, good for hauling furniture or clearing out a dorm room in one trip. The Odyssey works for smaller loads with family.

UT campus parking is managed by UT Parking Services, and the policies for visitor and temporary parking change periodically. If you're parking a rental car on campus during move-in, check the current visitor parking rates and zones at the parking office or their website before you arrive — move-in day has dedicated logistics and reserved areas that differ from normal semester parking.

For off-campus apartments near campus (the Fort, White Ave, down by the Old City), street parking and apartment lot parking work normally. The rental car parks anywhere your personal car would park — it's just another Tennessee-registered vehicle.

We don't have a UT rate or a student discount. We're going to be honest about that. What we do have is a direct booking price that doesn't include Turo's service fee (typically 15–25% on top of the host rate), which makes direct booking the cheaper option for most rentals by a meaningful margin.

If you're booking through Turo for the first time, the platform is straightforward and the protection plans are real value if insurance coverage is a concern. But if you're a returning renter or you're comfortable with the direct booking process, direct is cheaper and communication is faster (you're talking to us directly, not through a platform inbox).

Promo codes for direct bookings do exist and are communicated through our Instagram and direct channels. If you found us through Turo first, it's worth checking if a direct booking rate is available before committing to the Turo channel for subsequent rentals.