10 Reasons to Choose Leasing Over Owning a Business Vehicle

For businesses that need to make deliveries, move equipment or facilitate other transportation, you might want to consider leasing your business vehicles. Buying business vehicles might sound like a better investment, but leasing can be appealing especially for businesses that have strict transportation schedules and need to minimize down time.

Here are some of the reasons you might want to choose leasing over owning your next business vehicle.

Benefits of Leasing a Vehicle for Your Small Business

Less Up-Front Cost

When you’re considering whether to buy or lease vehicles for your business, cost has to be a major determining factor. While there are many different calculations you’ll have to make based on your specific business and its needs, the up-front costs are almost sure to be less when you’re leasing. For small businesses, the ability to spread out the investment rather than having to pay a good portion of it at the same time can be a real benefit.

Money Saved on Repairs

You can also potentially save even more money down the road when it comes to maintenance and repairs. For JKG Group, a marketing support company in South Florida, this was one of the main benefits that led to them switching from owning their own fleet to renting trucks through logistics and transportation provider Ryder.

According to JKG’s Director of Logistics Josh Aragon, the company had a small fleet of about five trucks that were aging. And all of the regular repairs that started to become necessary made it clear that they needed to make a change.

Increased Reliability

Along those same lines, leased vehicles that are newer and don’t require as many repairs as older vehicles are often more reliable and can help businesses more easily make and stick to travel and delivery plans.

Decreased Down Time

But cost isn’t the only reason that it can make sense to have newer, more reliable vehicles. If you’re relying on older vehicles that constantly break down or require maintenance, that also means potentially having to deal with down time where your vehicles aren’t available. Especially if you have a business that needs to make deliveries or perform other tasks on a tight time frame, that down time can lead to many other issues and frustrations.

Fewer Contingency Plans

When vehicle repairs become necessary, it also forces businesses to come up with other transportation plans. This takes extra manpower, added last-minute costs and more. But if you lease newer vehicles and work with companies that can help ensure you have reliable vehicles, you can save the time and money on those contingency plans.

Aragon said in a phone interview with Small Business Trends, “It seemed like every other week we had an issue with our trucks and we’d have to create contingency plans on the fly. We had to call couriers. Drivers were stuck on the road for hours. It’s just not an efficient way to run things.”

Lower Frustration Levels

In addition, all of those last-minute changes and added costs can also lead to frustration for business owners and managers. If you have a lot of uncertainty surrounding your business transportation, it just makes the whole process of running your business a lot more frustrating. That can weigh on you and also have a negative impact on your team members.

Easy Repairs

When repairs are necessary for your leased vehicles, working with transportation providers like Ryder can also make that process quicker and easier. For example, Aragon says that JKG has dropped off vehicles for maintenance on Friday and gotten them back on Monday so they didn’t miss any days. And Ryder has even gone to JKG’s location to make repairs so they didn’t need to go out of the way.

Flexibility of Services

When you work with a company like Ryder for your transportation, you can negotiate different services or terms as part of your lease agreement. That means that you can come up with a transportation plan that is more tailored to your specific business, instead of simply purchasing vehicles outright and having to deal with everything else on your own.

Ryder Business Development Manager for JKG Andrew Siciliano pointed out in a phone interview with Small Business Trends, “What works for JKG might not work for ABC business down the street just due to their schedule and delivery times. So we really work with each customer to offer flexibility of services that can be molded to fit each one’s individual needs.”

Access to Information

When you’re considering different transportation options for your business, there are plenty of resources out there that you can use to research different options. If you’re considering an option like Ryder, Siciliano suggests checking out the company’s website or even visiting a nearby location to ask some questions. And you can do the same for other companies you’re considering as well to make sure you’re getting the best possible match.

Low Risk

There are also many different lease periods you can opt for. So if you’re on the fence about whether or not leasing is right for your particular business, Aragon pointed out that there’s not as much risk involved in signing up for a one-year lease compared to actually purchasing a new vehicle. If you’re unhappy with it or decide that leasing isn’t right for your business, you can always go back to owning when that short period is over.

Car Dealer Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "10 Reasons to Choose Leasing Over Owning a Business Vehicle" was first published on Small Business Trends