Advice on location of Hertz Car Rental from Florence?

I have not driven in or out of Florence. Hopefully someone else can answer that. My idea is …let's call it "creative" ,,, to help you avoid having to drive out of Florence.

I did rent a car from Hertz in Lucca. Super simple! The Hertz office is just at the edge of the old town. Depending on your itinerary, you could take the train from Florence, stay a night or two in Lucca and then drive from there to Montepulciano. If you don't have flexibility to stay the night in Lucca, I suppose you could still do it, but I'm not sure if you would view that as "easier" than driving out of Florence.

We have rented from the Hertz location near the Florence airport twice and didn't have any trouble getting out of there onto the motorway going into Tuscany and another time toward Umbria. The Google Maps app was a big help. We took the tram from the center of Florence back to the airport and then took the Hertz shuttle to the car rental lot - easy and pretty quick. Then it's a short few blocks to get onto the motorway and away from the city.

Pretty darn easy. Straight shot to the Firenze Scandicci entrance to the E35 and then head south. It's in the opposite direction from central Florence and the dreaded ZTLs.

Edit: If you're staying very near the T1 tram line, there's a stop right by the Sansovino Hertz. Otherwise, take a taxi from your hotel.

We arrange our cars by calling up Autoeurope using the toll free number; get zero-deductible collision. They stopped using Hertz in Orvieto due to complaints. Good service by Hertz in Chiusi [closed Sunday] half block from the station. The train to Rome is at 10:54AM. E-tickets do not need to be validated.

The Florence Airport location is at Via Palagio degli Spini, a short distance from the terminal, best reached by taxi.

https://www.wanderingitaly.com/maps/valdorcia.html

We used the Sansovino location
Getting on to Chianti road was a piece of cake from there- no ZTLs to worry about
No need to go to airport and pay higher airport rates

Do a search here for car rental in Florence there are many threads
Look for responses by Roberto he always gives very specific instructions as to how to exit city and avoid ZTLs

Thank you all for the replies. I will do some more homework and call AutoEurope as suggested-online I wasn't able to see much. I will also consider the possible use of Hertz but dropping the car in a slightly different location, not too far away.

Lynn-
We have always used AutoEurope online. If you are having trouble seeing any offers it could be because of the pick up/drop off times you are putting in.
I just realized this myself as I am looking at car rental in Portugal. I kept getting nothing because I was putting in 2 pm for drop off. Turns out the locations I wanted are actually closed from 12:30-2:30- so once I put in 2:30 or later I got plenty of results. (duh)

Look up the hours of rental locations you want to use using Google.

Thanks Rick Steves Team, I will try a differnt time. I was worried I wasn't able to find one!

I am a little sad there isn't a drop off now in Orvieto. I was planning on staying one night-simply to drop the car off and catch the train. I see there is another town, but was feel a little sad about it.

(I'm not Rick Steves Team- but you're welcome!)

Really too bad about Orvieto- we have not visited yet but actually had plans to drop our car there at 1 time- as you have.
We ended up heading over to Assisi for 2 nights then drove to Spoleto to drop car- train from there to Rome- it was easy.

From Montepulciano to Chiusi is about a 30 minute drive. Drop the car there, and take the train to Orvieto. Takes 27 minutes.

If you are afraid to drive out of Borgo Ognissanti downtown, then the easiest Hertz location to pick up to go to Montepulciano is the Hertz on Via Ambrosoli. You are just seconds from the expressway to the A1 freeway entrance Firenze Sud. You will take that freeway to go to Montepulciano.

Hertz Firenze Sud - Via Giorgio Ambrosoli 30
Via Giorgio Ambrosoli, 30, 50136 Firenze FI
055 095 0022
https://goo.gl/maps/J5Xhe3trqCfbY5T8A

The location on Via Del Sansovino is the second best.

Picking up at the airport, or worse in Lucca, is nonsense.

We did that exact same trip. Booked through AutoEurope and picked up our car at the Hertz office on Via Borgo Ognissanti. It was a little crowded on a Saturday morning, but they eventually got us sorted out. We then drove to our apartment rental in Montepulciano. It was pretty easy to get out of Florence, and once across the river, we were on our way!

Biggest problem came several months later, when, after being assured by our landlord that our car's license plate was on the "white-list", we received notices of multiple Montepulciano ZTL violations. Eventually got that cleared up, but if you do plan on driving into Montepulciano's ZTL, make sure to understand the regulations (the town has a website, and there's apparently a pre-authorization form that nobody mentioned that you may want to look into or inquire about to your hotel/landlord)!

After Montepulciano, we dropped the car in Chiusi, about a block from train station, where we caught our train to Rome. Really convenient.

We did a similar trip in 2015. A stay in Florence for a few days and then we rented a car to go out to the countryside. We got our car from the airport rental site. From the Florence train station we took an airport shuttle bus to collect the car. It was a reasonable price, convenient, efficient and easy to access the autostrada from the airport.