There's also a wide disparity in the health of the rental industry geographically. I'm in the process of a move from an area where there are multiple airports with multiple flight schools and a wide variety of good rental aircraft at a good price to another where they are virtually non-existent.

Std Deviation, where have you seen a 5 hour daily minumum? In more than 20 years of renting I've never seen one higher than 3 with 2 being the most common I've come across. And, despite a number of multi-day trips, I've only actually had to pay them twice.