When you run a business that relies on transport for part, or all, of its’ operations you have a choice of either buying the vehicles that you need or hiring them. This can be a complex choice, because the initial costs of buying fleet vehicles may seem to be less than the cost of hiring them. However, there are other factors that you have to take into account.

Unless your business is cash-rich, you will no doubt have to finance the purchase at the outset. Yes, you spread the cost over a known period, but obviously it is more expensive than buying outright. But then you have other costs involved such as maintenance and breakdown services. This could work out to be more expensive than hiring, where these costs are included in the hire charge.

Then there is always the ongoing costs of upgrades that may be necessary to comply with the latest legislation. One of the latest of these is the DVS which may require retrospective fitting of lower windows on passenger doors, particularly if you are buying second-hand vehicles. In addition, who knows what further legislation may take place over the next few years? When you hire your vehicles, they will take care of all of this. In addition, you will have the very latest vehicles with all mod cons. Furthermore, older vehicles are often less fuel-efficient than the latest models and have higher carbon emissions.

Of course, here may be occasions when hiring is the obvious choice. For instance, unless you are in the building industry, you won’t want to buy skips. In most cases they are only needed for a short while, and so the answer would be skip hire in Sheffield. When you use skip hire in Sheffield, you simply pay to hire for however long it is needed, which may only be a few days or a couple of weeks.

An Asset That You Can Sell

Of course, one advantage of buying your fleet as opposed to lorry rental in Manchester is that at the end of the day you will have an asset that you can sell. However, the costs of buying and running your fleet in the first instance may well not make this a good proposition, particularly when you take into account upgrades for compliance. You may well need to allow for those anyway if you choose to buy second-hand vehicles. You also have to allow for the fact that although the initial capital cost is lower, you may have to spend more on maintenance.

Another advantage of lorry rental in Manchester is that you will very likely have less downtime, because, at T G Commercials we are obliged to keep your vehicles on the road, regardless of the circumstances. So, for example, if your lorry is involved in an accident and is off the road for a month while the repairs are carried out, you can’t use it. When you hire from us, we have to replace the damaged vehicle with another, so you will keep going.