Renting vs buying: the real five-year math
The sticker is the smallest part of the decision. Here is the arithmetic, with the columns most people leave out.
We rent machines and we sell machines. So take this as arithmetic, not advice: the honest answer is that one of them is cheaper for you, and which one depends on a number you already have.
The number is utilisation
Utilisation is the share of the year the machine actually works. Not the share it sits in your yard looking like an asset. The share it earns.
Rent wins at low utilisation because you pay only for the days you use. Ownership wins at high utilisation because the purchase spreads across enough working days to beat the day rate. Everything else in this post is detail on where the line sits.
What ownership actually costs
Buyers compare the purchase price to the rental rate and stop. The purchase price is the one cost you are guaranteed to remember. Here are the ones that decide the outcome:
- Finance cost — the money costs money, unless you paid cash, in which case it costs whatever that cash would have earned.
- Maintenance and wear parts — filters, edges, pins, bushings, tyres or tracks. Owned machines wear on your dime.
- Downtime — the day it will not start is a day you pay for twice: no work, and a repair.
- Transport — every move between sites, all five years.
- Storage and insurance — the yard space is not free even when it is yours.
- Resale — the one column that pays you back, and the hardest to predict.
What renting actually costs
Renting is not just the rate either. Our rentals ship delivered, fuelled and inspected, so the service and the wear are ours. But the rate is a rate: run it 200 days a year for five years and you have paid 1,000 day rates. That is the whole argument for owning, and it is a good one at that volume.
How to do the math in ten minutes
- Count the daysLook back at last year. How many days did this machine class actually work? Use the real number, not the optimistic one.
- Price the rentalDays times the day rate, or weeks times the week rate where the job runs long. Ask us for both — the week rate is not seven day rates.
- Price the ownershipPurchase, plus finance, plus a maintenance allowance, plus transport, minus what you think it resells for in five years.
- Divide by working daysBoth columns, same divisor. Now you have two cost-per-working-day figures, and they are comparable.
- Then adjust for the thing math missesIf the machine being unavailable costs you a contract, ownership is worth more than the spreadsheet says. If your work changes shape every quarter, flexibility is worth more than it says.
The case for the middle
Most fleets are not all-rent or all-own. Own the machine that works every day. Rent the peaks, the specialist iron, and the classes you are still learning. That is not a compromise. That is the answer for most contractors we deal with.
Lease-to-own sits deliberately between the two: you run the machine now and the payments build toward owning it. Our sister company Blue Capital handles loans, leases, and lease-to-own.
What we will not do
We will not tell you to buy a machine you would use nine days a year. Tell us the days and the job, and we will run both columns with you — including the one where you rent.
