For any successful business, getting the most profit and saving extra costs on expenses is the main priority. This is also true in the case of trucking business, where it’s the business owner and fleet manager’s responsibility to find the best options when they’re expanding their business.
For example, if the business is booming and you need to expand your fleet by adding more commercial semi trucks, you might need to consider various options to land the deal.
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This includes buying or leasing these semi trucks, leaving you with the popular question: “should I buy or lease? And what are the commercial truck leasing prices?
In today’s article, you’ll find a complete guide that answers this question along with many others regarding this matter. So without further ado, let’s dive in!
Can You Lease a Commercial Semi Truck?
Leasing is basically a long term car rental. It gives you almost full authority on the vehicle during that time for a fixed monthly fee. Leasing is usually controlled by an agreed period of time as well as a specific number of miles.
In fact leasing makes for a pretty compelling option for fleet managers and business owners, as it’s great for a lot of situations.
For example, a company that has a relatively short vehicle replacement cycle might rely on semi truck leasing. This includes high visibility vehicles that are used as a “moving ad” or “rolling billboard” for marketing purposes are usually leased rather than bought.
There are many companies that operate on leasing a wide variety of vehicles, such as cars, semi trucks, vans, box trucks, and more.
Ideally, these companies can offer huge flexibility in the contract length as well as a variety of payment options, including paying monthly in advance or arrears and paying quarterly in advance or arrears
These companies can also offer a huge range of benefits and additional services to their customers, such as:
- Easy vehicle acquisition
- Vehicle relocation
- Vehicle tagging and remarketing
How Much Does it Cost to Lease a Box Commercial Truck?
Cost is the main value to business at the end of the day and it’s one of the most critical factors for business owners and fleet managers. However, unlike the cost of leasing, the price of a new semi truck is pretty easy to figure out.
Leasing is usually picked by fleet managers as a viable purchasing policy to put commercial box trucks into use without having to pay a lot of initial costs.
In fact, leasing a commercial truck is usually picked over outright buying a car through loan because the monthly fees on loan installments will probably cost much more than leasing.
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For a commercial truck, the average lease price for the used one can be as low as $200 per month but can easily go as far as $1,000 a month or even more.
However, leasing a brand new commercial truck would cost you a little more, ranging anywhere between $1,600 to $2,500.
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As you can see, there’s no fixed cost for what a commercial truck would set you back through leasing. Instead, you have a range that mainly depends on various factors, such as:
- The model and class of the vehicles
- The age of the vehicle
- The size of the semi truck
- The added features and services included in the leasing contract on the leasing company’s behalf.
How Much is Commercial Vehicle Insurance?
When it comes to cost calculations, you should know that the monthly lease costs are just the smaller picture. There’s an additional range of smaller but critical costs that you should probably keep in mind.
One of these costs is the commercial vehicle insurance, which usually has a higher liability limit than regular car insurance. Moreover, the commercial vehicle insurance can cover an unlimited number of cars.
In fact, you’d be surprised to know that the price of a commercial vehicle insurance can be surprisingly high, reaching anywhere between $800 to $1,200 per month for each vehicle in your fleet.
Despite being a pretty high sum, you’d still need to pay that much whether you’re buying the car or leasing it.
In some cases, you might be lucky enough to land a deal with a leasing company where they’ll handle a portion of the insurance, saving you tons of money at the end of the month!
How Much is the Cost of Routine Maintenance?
Routine maintenance is also something that you should probably keep in mind while calculating how much it would cost you to lease a vehicle.
Unlike insurance, the routine maintenance prices are something extremely dependent on various other factors that you and your leasing companies should agree on.
Additionally, you’ll have to weigh in the age and the mileage of your vehicle where older vehicles will probably cost you more.
Another thing that you should know about routine maintenance is that it has a potentially high chance to be much less for a leased vehicle when compared to buying a new truck.
And why is that? Simply because many leasing companies would include routine maintenance to the contract where they handle all the monthly cost of maintenance.
Other companies that won’t include the maintenance fees automatically in the contract would probably provide it at huge discounts, saving you a lot of money. Not to mention all the hassle and burdens of looking for good maintenance centers yourself.
Leasing services always prefer that they handle the maintenance of their vehicles themselves to make sure that the vehicles stay in top conditions. So it’s always a win-win situation for both ends.
Since commercial trucks operate almost all day every day, they’re prone to various issues and might cost a bit more than the average car maintenance fees.
For instance, most commercial trucks are estimated to cost anywhere between $13,000 to $15,000 a year on regular maintenance. Remember, this is just an average estimation that might greatly increase or decrease.
This is usually known as “full-service leasing”. One last thing to consider about maintenance in general is that sometimes, there are some parts that are specifically omitted from the contract while mentioning maintenance, such as: glass, brake, tires, and more!
Also, some maintenance contracts will only cover a specific mileage or a specific period of time at which the service expires.
How Much is the Cost of Fuel in a Leased Commercial Truck?
Finally, a huge factor of your monthly expenses is your fuel consumption, which again, depends on the type of vehicle you’re leasing as well how efficient it is with the fuel.
Similar insurance and maintenance, fuel is also something that you’d consider in any situation. So, it doesn’t have a true impact on the viability of truck leasing vs outright buying a truck.
Commercial Lease Payments and Tax Deductions
Commercial taxes are one of the critical expenses that you should keep in mind while deciding between leasing or purchasing a commercial truck. Here’s how it goes:
When you purchase a new truck you might be able to get the interest rate of the loan deducted from your taxes each month.
On the other hand, a lot of people don’t know that vehicle leasing also qualifies for a huge deduction on their taxes, potentially saving a huge portion of your monthly expenses.
With leasing you can actually deduct all the cost of each leased month, saving you a lot of tax burdens from business taxes.
Keeping this in mind, this can actually count as a huge advantage for leasing a truck vs buying it with a car loan.
What is the Best Lease to Purchase Trucking Company?
One of the best methods to lease a truck is through purchasing a lease from a trucking company. These vendors offer various options for regular lease contracts, including up to 2 to 4 years of contract leasing.
Not only that, some companies might also offer an option to buy the truck at the end of the lease for a special price. Here’s a list of the 6 best lease to purchase trucking companies.
JB Hunt
JB Hunt is one of the companies that has been around for a while and they offer a wide multitude of flexible leasing options as well as a wide range of semi trucks that are available for lease.
They’re known for their simple contract terms with no hidden segments, variety of payment options and easy scheduling.
Baylor Trucking
Another great company that offers semi trucks and box vans for lease is Baylor Trucking. Despite their wide range of options and great flexibility, they have strict policy of only providing lease for those who have been working for a company for at least 2 months before getting their least vehicle.
PGT Trucking
One of the easiest companies to deal with when it comes to leasing a semi truck is PGT Trucking.
For starters, they’re one of the largest trucking carriers in the country with over 30 agencies and terminals around the nation.
Additionally, they don’t require an initial down payment before you get behind the wheel of your least commercial truck.
Penske Trucking
Penske Trucking is a decent option with a wide variety of commercial trucks of various duties to lease.
GDS Express Trucking
One of the oldest trucking carriers in the field that have been operating for over 25 years. They offer a wide range of vehicles and update their fleet regularly.
Celadon Trucking
One of the trucking companies that provide the most recent models for lease, making it an ideal choice for businesses seeking modern vehicles as a way to attract customers to their business.
How Much Does it Cost to Buy a Commercial Truck?
Of course, the price of a commercial truck will always depend on the model you want.
However, a general rule of thumb is that most brand new commercial large trucks (heavy duty one) will cost you an average of $120,000 to $150,000. A used truck of the same class will usually run between $45,000 to $80,000 or even $100,000.
However, a new model of a light duty box truck would cost around $25,000 to $50,000 while a used medium duty one would come at a range of $45,000 to $80,000.
Tracking your Leased or Purchased fleet with GPS
Regardless if you lease or own your truck. You also want to focus on how to maximize your productivity with that vehicle. That is when you will … GPS sales pitch – include Ascent Fleet since they are dropping leasing company names
Is it Cheaper to Buy or Lease a Semi Truck?
Based on everything you now know, you can easily conclude that the answer to that question mainly depends on your needs and your business plan.
For a business that’s considering a long term plan with a truck that should last you for a long time, it’s actually much wiser to consider outright buying the truck rather than leasing it.
But since leasing a semi truck will cost you noticeably lower than what a car loan installment would, a short term plan or business with a short vehicle replacement cycle would benefit greatly from leasing the truck
Additionally, leasing will grant you the ability to upgrade for a newer, more advanced vehicle once your lease is up, allowing your fleet to always feature the latest vehicles.
However, with all side factors aside like fuel, tax deduction, maintenance, and commercial vehicle insurance, commercial truck leasing is significantly cheaper in the vast majority of cases.
Wrapup
Whether you’ve made your decision to buy or lease a semi truck, always make sure that you make some time to have a look at the contract terms to see if it’s the best deal for you.
When it comes to leasing, flexibility is one of the biggest assets you’re going to enjoy. However, with all the options available out there, making the decision might be a bit challenging. Also, leasing a truck is an excellent way to reduce their upfront costs.
Lease agreements will vary from one carrier to another, with each of them having their different set of prices for their leased vehicles.
Remember to do your research properly to find the best deal in order to save the most money and have the highest return on investment possible!
