I learned all these things about renting a truck.
You may remember that I learned last year that a U-Haul guaranteed reservation means nothing. Specifically, it means that they guarantee that they won’t raise the rate when you pick up the truck, but it in no way implies that there will be a truck to pick up! It turns out that Budget has the same system. I asked Budget “Then what’s the difference?”. “The price”, Zach the Budget Guy told me. And boy, what a difference!
So I learned:
- Ryder trucks are only local, so it’s just U-Haul and Budget
- Budget rental trucks are roughly half the price of U-Haul, for the same thing!
- You can request features (a third seat, for example), but you won’t know if you get it until the truck arrives at the pickup spot, usually a day before your reservation
- Even if you think you know what you are getting (a newish truck with an input jack for mp3/iPod), there may be a last minute switch to “or not”. Ours was due to a Check Engine light. The next truck was older and had no such gadgetry.
- Bring your own padlock. If you are like us, you have a stack of them. Why buy yet another?
- Bring your own GPS (but you already figured that out)
Steve is the one who drove the whole Eastern Seaboard in 2.5 days – Steve, what did I forget?
Jane's Lessons Learned 
Check the Road Food website by Jane and Michael Stern before you start your trip, but take chances on local food otherwise. I marked one barbecue joint in NC, but had to pass it up because I wasn’t yet hungry after enjoying a couple helpings at a great lunch buffet I tripped on in Santee SC. The place looked suspect from the outside, but the food was out of this world – the highlight of my trip.