Renting a car in Barrow (Utqiagvik)

Tundra Transport Rentals is a locally owned car rental company in Utqiagvik, Alaska — the town most people still call Barrow. This page covers the things worth knowing before you book: why the town has two names, why almost everyone who flies in needs a vehicle, and what actually happens when you pick one up.

Both. They are one town. The city was named Barrow for most of the twentieth century and was officially renamed Utqiagvik — its Inupiaq name — in 2016. The new name is the legal and official one, and it is what you will see on maps and government paperwork. Barrow is still in wide everyday use, including by people who live here.

Nothing about a booking depends on which name you use. If you searched for a car rental in Barrow or a car rental in Utqiagvik, you are in the right place either way.

Utqiagvik is not connected to the Alaska highway system. There is no road in from Fairbanks or Anchorage, so you cannot drive your own vehicle here and you cannot pick one up elsewhere in the state and bring it with you. Everyone arrives by air.

That makes a rental a different kind of decision than it is in a city with rail, rideshare and a dozen rental desks. Whatever you need to get to while you are here — a work site, a clinic, an office, a supplier — you get to in the vehicle you arranged before you landed. Arranging it in advance matters more here than it does most places, because the local supply is genuinely small.

Scheduled jet service arrives at Wiley Post–Will Rogers Memorial Airport, on the edge of town. The nearest highway is the Dalton, and it ends at Deadhorse — more than two hundred miles east, with no road between there and here. Freight that will not fit on an aircraft comes by barge during the few months the sea is open. There is no road out, which is the single fact that shapes every rental in this town.

Inside town the roads are gravel rather than pavement, and the network is compact: the dirt roads that leave Utqiagvik end a short distance outside it. Snow and ice are on those roads for much of the year. None of that makes driving here difficult, but it does mean the vehicle matters more than the mileage — which is why both vehicles in the fleet are built for that surface rather than for a highway.

Utqiagvik is the northernmost city in the United States, and the light here runs in two long seasons rather than in days. The sun does not rise for roughly two months around midwinter, from late November into late January, and it does not set for roughly three months around midsummer. The exact dates shift slightly year to year.

For a rental, the practical consequence is headlights and heated seats in one season and a 24-hour working day in the other. Bookings run on the Alaska clock, pickups are arranged for whatever hour suits you, and the fleet is available open 24 hours, seven days a week — which in a place with no daylight for two months is a necessity rather than a selling point.

Residents, contractors working rotations on the North Slope, and government and agency personnel traveling for work. We are a local operator, not a franchise or a booking agent — the fleet is small, maintained here, and kept ready for road conditions through the year.

The current fleet, with live availability on each vehicle’s page:

• 2014 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon — $180 per day, before tax
• 2012 Ford Edge — $150 per day, before tax

You will need a valid driver’s license and proof of insurance, both uploaded during booking, and a credit card. The rental is paid by card when you book; the refundable security deposit is authorized separately in person at pickup and released when the vehicle comes back undamaged.

Collection is at an agreed point in Utqiagvik, arranged with you once the booking is confirmed. There is no counter to queue at and no airport desk, because a town this size does not support one — the trade-off is that pickup happens at a time and place that suits your flight rather than an opening hour. No geographic limit within Alaska road access from Utqiagvik. Once the vehicle is yours, where you take it on the local road network is your business.