As we enter the final quarter of the financial year, many trades people will no doubt be looking at their accounts and pondering if they’ve got enough in the pot to buy some new equipment. Spring is traditionally a busy time for plant and tool upgrades across the building industry, as operators look to invest their end-of-year surplus or else delay making a purchase into next year’s budget.
But rather than thinking just in terms of buying, it is also well worth considering plant and tool hire as an alternative option. Here are three reasons why it can make sense to hire equipment rather than own it outright.
Easier on your cash flow
The problem with buying tools and plant outright is that you have to have the ready cash available, or else take out a loan. Which is why there is usually a lot of activity crammed in around the end of the financial year, when there are more likely to be funds floating around, or else a firm can dip into next year’s budget.
But with plant hire, you free yourself from all that. Capital costs, which require putting up a considerable amount of cash up front, are transferred into operating costs, usually month-by-month payments for the duration of the lease period. This makes hiring much easier on the bank balance and simpler to plan your finances around, whenever you might need a certain piece of equipment.
Greater flexibility
As well as more flexibility in your spending options, hiring equipment gives you more flexibility in your product choices, too. The construction trade is a diverse business these days, and it is common to need different types of equipment for different jobs. When you hire, you can pick and choose the specialist gear you need as and when required, with no long-term commitment.
Access to the latest gear
When you buy a piece of plant, the economics of it dictate that you are probably going to want to keep running that machine for at least three, four, five years to get a decent return on your investment. But by that time, there could be much better options available on the market, and you face the tough decision between reinvesting or getting your money’s worth out of an increasingly obsolete piece of kit. But if you hire, every time you go to lease a new machine, you are able to pick the very latest technology available, and moreover spread the costs over the duration of your hire period.
As well as tools and plant, the above reasons can also be applied to hiring scaffolding for jobs rather than owning your own. Click here for more information.
