I've got to say I'm curious, how on did you decide that of all the thousands of places you could rent a car between NJ and Chicago that Sylvania, OH offered the best deal?
I had read that generally renting cars from regional locations is cheaper than cities/airports. So at first I checked around Jersey where I lived. Upon finding that there were basically no minivans available, I checked random locations in Pennsylvania and New York. As I kept expanding my geographical search area (I basically tested all of the Hertz locations I could find on the way to Chicag), I found that Sylvania, OHIO was by far the cheapest rental I could find (and by a lot, too).

Also, I needed to do the hour by hour breakdown to make sure that it's doable to get to SFO in time to return the rental (and the flights). I feel like at this point it is doable and if it turns out it isn't we'll cut down even more. I'm not married to the plan, and I think had you guys not warned me, I probably would have been, so thank you so much for that.

Thanks for the link to the list thread, I'll definitely read up....