What Broward County publishes about a rental car at Port Everglades
Port Everglades names no rental company and runs no counter of its own. Broward County Aviation publishes 12 counters at 600 Terminal Drive, 1.8 miles away, with every opening hour printed. Between the building and the ship sits one published vehicle, a $2 city bus with no cruise terminal on its timetable.
Two arms of the same county government hold the two halves of this trip. One of them measures the gap and prices the parking a returned car makes unnecessary. Another prints twelve telephone numbers, twelve floor levels and twelve sets of hours. Neither prints a fare, a curb or a clock for the mile and a half in between.
Every figure below was read in September 2026, and again on October 7, 2026, from the department that sets it: the Port Everglades cruise pages, the Broward County Aviation pages stamped July 23 and July 29, 2026, Port Everglades Tariff No. 12, and the Broward County Transit Route 1 timetable effective October 26, 2025. No rental company website was opened for this guide, and the reason is set out further down.
| What a renter needs to know | Port Everglades (Broward County) | Broward County Aviation Department (FLL) |
|---|---|---|
| Rental counters on the property | None, and no company named anywhere on the cruise pages | 12 companies inside the Rental Car Center, listed by name |
| Address of the nearest counters | Not published; the port links to the airport instead | 600 Terminal Drive, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33315 |
| Opening hours | Not published | Printed per company, from 4 AM to 2 AM through 24/7 |
| Shuttle from the cruise terminals | Some firms provide one, with no name, curb, fee or time | Courtesy shuttles only operate between the Rental Car Center and the Terminals |
| Free ride to the port | n/a | There are no free shuttles to the port |
| Fare for the airport to port leg | Average taxi fare is $18 – $21 | $12 (estimated) on the cruise page, $18-$21 on the rate table |
| What the county charges the rental firm | $5.50 per contract for customers picked up at the port | Not published on any aviation page |
Only one row of that table has the same figure on both sides, and it is the one about a taxi neither department calls a rental service.
The paragraph Port Everglades prints under the heading Rental cars
Under a heading that reads Rental cars, the port writes three sentences and stops. The Rental Car Center at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport houses a large number of rental car companies in one location. There are also car rental firms licensed to do business at Port Everglades that are not located at FLL. Some provide shuttle services from cruise terminals to their nearby rental locations.
Read as an instruction, that paragraph has four holes. It gives no company name, no address for the nearby locations, no fee, and no hour. It also stops short of saying which of the eight cruise terminals a shuttle would collect from, and the port never treats those eight as interchangeable: Cruise Terminal 2 sits at 1801 SE 20th Street and Cruise Terminal 29 at 2200 SE 35th Street, with 18, 19, 21, 25 and 26 spread across Eller Drive and SE 32nd Street. Which of those addresses a passenger stands at is decided by the ship, as the layout of the eight numbered terminals and the gates in front of them makes clear.
Its one hyperlink does not survive either. The words Rental Car Center in that paragraph point at broward.org/airport/Passengers/Transportation/Pages/rentalcars.aspx, and that address returned HTTP 301 to the airport home page when it was requested on September 5, 2026, and again on October 7, 2026. A reader who clicks it lands on flight arrivals, not on a counter list.
A working version of the same page exists. It sits at a shorter path on the same county site, and it is worth reaching, because it is the only place in Broward County where the hours are written down.
Twelve counters at 600 Terminal Drive, and every opening hour printed
Inside one building next to Terminal 1, Broward County Aviation lists 12 rental companies with a telephone number, a floor level and a set of operating hours for each. That combination does not exist at the other two big South Florida cruise ports.
| Company, as Broward County Aviation lists it | Level inside the Rental Car Center | Hours of operation the county prints | Open when a ship debarks at 7 AM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ace | Level 3 | 24/7 | Yes |
| Alamo | Level 2 | 5 AM to Midnight | Yes |
| Avis | Level 3 | 24/7 | Yes |
| Budget | Level 4 | 24/7 | Yes |
| Dollar | Level 4 | 4 AM to 1 AM | Yes |
| Enterprise | Level 2 | 5 AM to Midnight | Yes |
| Fox | Level 3 | 5 AM to 1 AM | Yes |
| Hertz | Level 3 | 4 AM to 2 AM | Yes |
| National | Level 2 | 5 AM to Midnight | Yes |
| Payless | Level 3 | 24/7 | Yes |
| Sixt | Level 4 | 6 AM to Midnight | Yes |
| Thrifty | Level 4 | 4 AM to 1 AM | Yes |
Line up that last column against the port’s own clock and the counter stops being the problem. Passengers typically debark the ship between 7 and 9AM, Port Everglades states, and the latest of the twelve to raise its shutter does so at 6 AM. Four of them never close. The earliest closing time in the building is midnight, so an evening sailing leaves the return side just as comfortable.
Miami runs the opposite way. Miami International Airport recommends following up with your rental car company directly to confirm their hours of operation, on a page stamped Updated Dec. 2022, while Miami-Dade County names Dollar Rent-A-Car and Hertz Rent-A-Car as the two firms shuttling from the port and states that there are no on-site car rental agencies at PortMiami. That asymmetry is worked through in the debarkation-morning case at PortMiami and its 7.1 mile gap. Fort Lauderdale prints the hours and no company at the port; Miami prints two companies at the port and no hours.
Ten more firms appear on the same airport page as off-site operators, among them Easirent, Green Motion and ZezGo, reached by walking to Zone G for a courtesy shuttle. A courtesy phone sits between bus stop number 6 and Zone G. None of those ten is described as serving a cruise terminal either.
$5.50 per contract, the price Broward County puts on a pickup it will not name
Item No. 800 of Port Everglades Tariff No. 12, Issue No. 8, effective October 1, 2026, settles the question of whether those port shuttles exist. Companies conducting or engaging in motor vehicle rental business or services at Port Everglades must remit five dollars and fifty cents per contract, payable monthly, for customers picked up at Port Everglades.
Money changes hands, so pickups happen. Each firm has to file with the Port Everglades Department’s Finance Division by the fifteenth of each month, with a statement certified by one of the company’s officers setting out how many rental contracts it secured through its operations at the port. That filing means the county knows the exact number of cruise passengers collected at a terminal last month, and publishes neither the number nor the names behind it.
Set that against the neighboring county and the two charging models invert. Miami-Dade prices the same activity as a flat business permit, item 714, at $500.00 a year for Car Rentals, Courtesy Shuttle Services, plus 8% of gross revenues from any rental company operating without a non-exclusive license agreement. At $5.50 a contract, a firm would need 91 pickups at Port Everglades in a year before it matched PortMiami’s flat annual fee. Per-contract billing scales with the number of cruise passengers collected; a flat annual permit does not move at all.
One published detail does help a passenger spot the vehicle. Firms authorized to do business in Port Everglades under a business permit or franchise must purchase identifying emblems at a cost of $15.00 each, to be displayed on their vehicles and by their personnel. The emblem is the only physical marker the county describes; the list of who carries it is not published anywhere on the port site.
Every published leg between a Port Everglades gangway and a rental counter
Five vehicles have a published existence between the Rental Car Center and a Port Everglades gangway, and they are priced by four different offices. Two of them start at a cruise terminal, one at an airport terminal, and two inside the Rental Car Center itself. A sixth appears only in the tariff.
| Mode, as its issuer names it | Published price | Where it actually starts | Limit the issuer prints | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RCC courtesy shuttle | Free | Rental Car Center, level 3, and the lower level at all four airport terminals | Only operates between the Rental Car Center and the Terminals | Getting from the counter to an airport curb, every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day |
| Broward County Transit Route 1 | $2 one-way cash fare, $5 all day pass | Upper departure level of the Rental Car Center, Stop G | Exact fare required, operators do not carry change | The only priced vehicle whose airport stop is the rental building |
| Taxi cab, airport estimate | $12 (estimated) on the meter | Taxi podium at each of the four airport terminals | Up to five people on one meter | Budgeting the floor for a party of 1 to 5 |
| Taxi cab, port estimate | $18 – $21 average | Terminal curb, both directions | Metered rate only, flat rates are NOT allowed | Budgeting the ceiling, which is the safer number |
| Van on Demand | $11 per person to FLL | Gray and blue booth outside each cruise terminal | Parties of 3 or more, not available on all sailing days | A debarking party of three or more with no cab on the stand |
| Rental company courtesy shuttle | Not published by any issuer | Not published by any issuer | $5.50 per contract remitted to Broward County | Nothing that can be checked before the ship lands |
The Van on Demand seat price and the two disagreeing taxi figures belong to the 1.8 mile transfer that Broward County prices twice, where the $9 spread between two county pages is taken apart in full. Here they matter only as the fares a returned car forces a passenger to pay.
Where the 1.8 miles stops being 1.8 miles, in both directions
Neither published taxi figure was measured from 600 Terminal Drive. Both were measured from an airport terminal curb, and the Rental Car Center is a separate building reached by a shuttle or a pedestrian bridge. That difference is the whole subject of this guide.
Embarkation runs like this. A driver returns the car at the Rental Car Center, boards the courtesy shuttle that runs every 10 minutes around the clock, and rides to Terminal 1 by the level 2 pedestrian bridge or to Terminals 2, 3 or 4 by bus. Only at that curb does a priced vehicle appear: a taxi at $12 to $21, or a shared ride. From there comes a security checkpoint where everyone aged 18 or older shows a government-issued photo ID and cruise documents, no weapons under Florida State Statute 311.12(3b), and vehicles subject to search. Then one of eight street addresses.
Debarkation runs the same chain backwards with a tighter clock. Off the ship between 7 and 9AM, a passenger finds two priced options on the port’s own terminal pages, a taxi at $18 – $21 and Van on Demand at $11 per person for parties of three or more. Both drop at an airport terminal. The RCC courtesy shuttle then covers the last hop, and the counter is already open, because all twelve are.
What no issuer covers is the hop itself when it happens outside those two chains. Taxi podiums appear at the four airport terminals in the aviation department’s own list, and ride-share zones at Zone Z, GTA-2 and the Palm Garage, while the Rental Car Center appears in neither. That same department writes that there are no free shuttles to the port and that a passenger who did not pre-arrange has two options, shared ride and taxi cab.
Winner for a party of two returning a car on sailing day: the courtesy shuttle to a terminal curb, then a cab. Criterion is published availability, since the shuttle runs 24 hours a day and the taxi podiums are printed for all four terminals. The nuance is cost, because the cab meter starts at the airport rather than at the counter.
Winner on published cost for that same leg: Broward County Transit Route 1, at $2 a head. Criterion is that its airport stop is inside the rental building, on the upper departure level, marked Stop G, which no other priced vehicle can claim. The nuance is severe: its six timepoints are Aventura Mall, US 1 and Hallandale Beach Boulevard, Young Circle, the airport, Broward Health Medical Center and Broward Central Terminal, and not one of them is a cruise terminal.
Winner for anyone who never rents at all: leaving the car in a port garage and paying the barrier. That is a different calculation, and the number it produces is the reason the rest of this page exists.
What seven nights of port parking costs, and what a returned car erases
A Port Everglades parking day is capped at $25.00 since October 1, 2026, and item 1135 of Tariff No. 12 states that all parking fees include sales taxes, so nothing is added at the barrier. Seven nights is $175.00 exactly. Oversized vehicles carry a $30.00 daily maximum in item 1135 and $35 on the parking page, the port accepts no reservations or pre-payment, and all daily rates begin when you pull the parking ticket.
That $175.00 is the only figure both halves of this decision publish in the same currency. A pair of adults in a cab spends $24 to $42 across the two trips, depending on which county page they believe. The same pair on Route 1 spends $8, under 5% of the garage bill, and buys a walk at the far end, since the port puts its bus service at Northport on SE 17th Street and no cruise terminal is a Route 1 timepoint. The full rate ladder behind the ceiling, which the parking page now prints in full, sits in the breakdown of the $25.00 daily maximum and the six parking facilities.
Timing changes the sum in one direction only. Since the day starts when the ticket comes out of the machine rather than at midnight, a car dropped at 4 PM on a Saturday and collected at 8 AM the following Saturday crosses seven ticket days, not six. Nobody who returned the car at 600 Terminal Drive pays any of it.
Details on the Broward pages that decide a Port Everglades rental
- Free cell phone waiting lots exist for the people collecting a debarking passenger, at the Port Administration Building, 1850 Eller Drive, just past the security checkpoint, and at the lot north of Cruise Terminal 18. A rental shuttle has no published equivalent.
- Porter service reaches only three kinds of vehicle. Porters hired by the cruise line deliver bags to private cars, taxis and limousines, in the port’s own wording, and a rental company van is none of the three.
- The airport’s own cruise page recommends a rental and then lists ways to the port that exclude one. Consider renting a car and exploring beautiful South Florida, it says under Car Rentals, on a page whose Port Everglades section offers shared ride and taxi cab only.
- That same Car Rentals block ends with a colon and nothing after it. The sentence These car rental companies are located in the RCC introduces a list that is absent from the page, which carries an Updated Jul 29, 2026 stamp.
- Cruise days at FLL are named, and they are Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Many returning passengers arrive at 8:30 a.m. for flights scheduled throughout the day, Broward County Aviation writes, which is the same window in which a rental counter queue forms.
- Only the airport end of this trip takes a bag. Public Baggage Storage is available in all FLL terminals on 954-359-5505, in Broward County Aviation’s words, while no storage or locker appears anywhere on the Port Everglades cruise pages.
- Two addresses circulate for the same airport. The rental page header reads 100 Terminal Drive, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33315, while the cruise page tells travelers to enter 100 Aviation Blvd, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33315 when searching for hotels.
- Cruise Services at Port Everglades answers on 954-468-3720 and the airport Ground Transportation Office on 1-866-435-9355, option 3. Neither number is printed beside a rental company name.
Where a Port Everglades rental plan breaks before the gangway
Treating 1.8 miles as the whole trip is the first failure. That measurement runs airport to port, and a renter starts at a separate building whose only published departures are a courtesy shuttle to four airport terminals and a city bus. Two extra transfers hide inside a distance that looks like a single hop.
Waiting at a cruise terminal for a rental shuttle is the second. A shuttle from cruise terminals does appear in the port’s own wording, and Tariff No. 12 collects $5.50 per contract from the firms that run one, yet every one of the eight terminal transportation pages lists exactly two vehicles at the curb, a taxi and Van on Demand. The walking directions on those pages are precise to the pavilion and say nothing about where a rental van stands.
Booking a cruise line coach after landing is the third. A cruise line representative meets pre-arranged passengers in the baggage claim area, and Broward County Aviation states that you cannot use the ship’s transportation unless you made a reservation prior to arriving at the airport. Returning a car does not create that reservation.
Assuming the counter decides the schedule is the fourth. In Miami it might, because Miami International Airport prints no hour for any individual counter and says only that its building runs 24 hours a day, with some operators closed between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. At Fort Lauderdale the twelve hour ranges are printed, the earliest opening is 4 AM and the latest is 6 AM, and both fall before the 7 AM floor of the port’s own debarkation window.
Counting the garage bill in nights is the last one. Since the clock starts when the ticket comes out, an afternoon drop-off and a morning collection a week later crosses seven $25.00 days rather than six, and the $175.00 total is what a returned car is actually competing against.
How these Port Everglades and Broward County figures were checked
The figures in this guide were verified in September 2026 against the sources named in each section, and every figure credited to Broward County or Port Everglades was read again on October 7, 2026, twice and minutes apart, after Tariff No. 12 was reissued on October 1, 2026. Confirm a rate on the Port Everglades parking page or in item 1135 before driving in. Every October 1, the first day of its fiscal year, the county reissues its port tariff, while shuttle fares and cruise line transfer prices change by season, and ship schedules change weekly; check the issuer’s page before you travel. No provider paid for placement here, and none can pay to appear. Where a booking link earns Lot and Gate a commission it is marked as sponsored and flagged in this line, and as of September 2026 no affiliate link is live anywhere on this site.
Rental companies are private issuers, so their own websites, rates, opening hours and shuttle policies are not read or repeated here. Every company name, telephone number and hour above was taken from a Broward County page, and every fee from Port Everglades Tariff No. 12.
Six questions about renting or returning a car at Port Everglades
The answers below come from the Port Everglades cruise pages and Tariff No. 12 Item No. 800, the Broward County Aviation pages stamped July 23 and July 29, 2026, and the Broward County Transit Route 1 timetable effective October 26, 2025, read in September 2026 and again on October 7, 2026.
No. Port Everglades publishes no counter on port property and names no company on its cruise pages. It points instead to the Rental Car Center at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, 1.8 miles away at 600 Terminal Drive, where Broward County Aviation lists 12 rental companies in one building.
No issuer publishes a direct fare. The county aviation department states its courtesy shuttles only operate between the Rental Car Center and the Terminals, and that there are no free shuttles to the port, so the trip becomes a shuttle to an airport curb plus a taxi at $12 to $21.
Port Everglades writes that some firms licensed to do business at the port provide shuttle services from cruise terminals, and its tariff charges them $5.50 per contract for customers picked up there. No company name, curb, fee or timetable is published, and the eight terminal transportation pages list only taxis and Van on Demand.
Every one of the 12 counters at the Rental Car Center has its hours printed by Broward County Aviation. Ace, Avis, Budget and Payless run 24/7; Dollar, Hertz and Thrifty open at 4 AM; Alamo, Enterprise, National and Fox at 5 AM; Sixt at 6 AM. Ships debark between 7 and 9AM.
On published figures, yes, for a party arriving by air. The port caps a parking day at $25.00 with sales tax included, which is $175.00 over seven nights, while two taxi rides cost $24 to $42 depending on which county page you read. Two Route 1 bus fares each way total $8.
Broward County Transit Route 1 stops on the upper departure level of the Rental Car Center at Stop G, and its timetable lists Port Everglades among its points of interest. The adult one-way cash fare is $2, exact change required, and no cruise terminal appears as a timepoint.
A county that prices the pickup and will not describe it
Broward County knows how many cruise passengers a rental firm collected at Port Everglades last month, to the contract, because $5.50 of each one reaches its Finance Division by the fifteenth. It knows which firms hold the permit, because it requires each of them to buy $15.00 identifying emblems for their vans. It publishes 12 counters, 12 telephone numbers and 12 sets of hours a mile and a half away, and it will not publish a curb.
So the shortest airport to port gap in Florida turns out to be the one with the most transfers inside it. Distance was never the constraint here.