Maggie Evans 
The primary goal of nearly every business is to generate profit. When it comes to managing your construction company’s fleet, it’s important to know how you can cut overhead costs, save time, and minimize overspending. If you’re considering starting your own company or already have it up and running, you can likely benefit from renting your fleet vehicles instead of purchasing them, and here’s why.
It Can Save You Money
Whether you need a fleet of 1-ton flatbeds or a handful of 4×4 trucks, a fleet rental service has you covered. One of the largest overhead costs of owning a construction company is the cost of purchasing, maintaining, and even upgrading rental equipment when necessary. A fleet rental company can offer a variety of vehicles in a timely fashion, reducing the need for you to finance them through your company.
If you’re an established company, you may have slowly built your fleet over time, but every vehicle runs out of steam eventually. Why not rent your new trucks instead of taking on more debt and dipping into profits? If you’re just starting a new construction business, you might not have enough capital to finance the vehicles necessary to get started. Either way, a fleet rental service can save you money.
The yearly average cost to own and maintain a car is about $10,000. You already know that a fleet of sedans isn’t going to cut it, so your costs will be higher. For a 2500 pickup truck, you’re looking at double. Factored into that is the monthly payment, insurance premiums, fuel, and maintenance. What if you could avoid the monthly payment and insurance premiums? When you rent your fleet trucks, you only pay the rental fee, fuel, and maintenance costs.
The other savings aspect is that when it comes time to trade it in, you just call up the rental company and they’ll swap it out. No need to take out additional financing to replace your worn-down vehicles. That leads to our next benefit
It Offers Flexibility
Not only can you trade vehicles through the rental service, but you can also upgrade, downgrade, add, or remove vehicles easily. When you’re just starting off, you might need three or four trucks but you can only afford to finance two. Renting will bridge the gap.
On a larger project, you may have to rent equipment, to begin with, but even if you own your heavy equipment, you may not be able to purchase the towing vehicles too. What if you discover you don’t have a truck big enough to tow your excavator? Call up your fleet rental office and order one. It’s certainly much cheaper than purchasing your own, especially if it’s a vehicle that might sit idle for a period of time.
Speaking of sitting idle, when you finance your fleet, you’re paying for them even when they’re not in use. Not just the monthly payments either. When a vehicle sits idle, it becomes more prone to mechanical issues, which then leads to higher maintenance costs for your company. If you rent your fleet, you only pay for them when you’re using them. So, if you only need certain vehicles sometimes, why not just rent or rotate them and save yourself the extra money?
Logistics Assistance
Another bonus to renting your fleet is that they’ll take care of a lot of logistics and monitoring. The rental company will deliver, transport, and pick up any vehicle you rent from them, and all you need to do is place the order. That cuts down on the time it takes your company to get a fleet vehicle from point A to point B, and when it comes to time, every dollar counts.
They can also provide fleet management monitoring if the vehicles come equipped with AI or IoT components. A large cost of owning a fleet is maintenance, which can be monitored by fleet management software. But what if you can’t afford to employ a manager or purchase vehicles new enough to have smart technology? Here’s where a fleet rental can help. They can assist you in tracking telematics and let you know when certain vehicles need service.
When you own your own construction business, owning and maintaining your fleet is critical, but costly. A fleet rental service can not only save you time and money, it can also bridge the gap if you don’t have enough capital to qualify for financing. Contact a fleet rental service today to find out how you can start saving money.
