San Fran to Vegas trip - car hire & one way fees?

[SpectroGirl]

I don't think you can generalise with this topic other than to say if a one way fee is payable it should be highlighted in the terms and conditions during the booking process.
The usual answer on here is that one way fees are not payable in California/Nevada and while it's true I've never paid one, I can say we've changed rental locations to avoid it. The fees can be used to manage the supply and demand of vehicles during busier periods and I've seen them applied to different variables such as: Time of year (eg August), Vehicle type (eg convertibles), Route (eg from San Francisco), Rental location (eg non-airport locations) etc.
This is a pic of a quote I got tonight on NetFlights for August and you can see the different treatment of fees in the quotes:

It's also not just the supplier - doing the same quote again with non-airport locations showed one way fees due with Alamo on SUV & Minivan rentals but not Fullsize or Premium.
An August quote with usrentacar for SFO-LAS shows the following narrative:

[amf]

Wonderful informative post SpectroGirl.

[JoS]

We just picked up our rental from Longbeach CA and will be returning it to San Diego airport. We are paying a $40 fee. We used Enterprise and knew about the fee in advance but got a good deal so don't mind paying it. Don't know if every rental company charges this.

[Lu Lu]

I don't mind paying it as long as I know what it is but don't want a $400 bill when I get there! I've asked expedia to confirm for us and if they can't give me a definitive answer I am going to book with Netflights as their site states there are no one way fees.