Forklift Rental vs Purchase

There are numerous OEM lift truck distributors in Southern California, and nearly all of them offer purchase, rental or lease options for forklifts. 

So which option makes the most sense for you?  It depends on a number of factors in your business.

Lift Truck Rental

The use cases for short term rental are usually pretty clear. Perhaps you have seasonal spikes in your inventory around the holidays and need more trucks during those months. Or maybe you’re building a new facility and only need additional forklifts until the new project is complete. 

Besides short term scenarios however, there are many situations where it makes perfect sense to lease lift trucks for longer periods of time instead of purchasing them.

Should you rent forklifts?  Here are a few factors to consider:

• Opex vs Capex: in many cases, renting a forklift is going to be treated as an operational expense instead of a capital expense.  This approach directly reduces the business’s taxable income instead of depreciating assets over longer periods.  This may not be true for all businesses, so you should check with your accounting team, but it may be something to consider.
• Maintenance & Repair:   When you rent or lease lift trucks, service and repair are built into your monthly rate.  This can help you avoid unexpected repair bills and perhaps reduce your head count by using the supplier’s maintenance team instead of your own. Maintenance costs become a known instead of an unknown. It can also help you avoid costly down time, as some suppliers will simply swap out equipment that needs significant or lengthy maintenance work.  
• Accountability: when a warehouse or fleet manager is directly responsible for financial performance, it’s sometimes more effective to measure them on the monthly cost of leasing vs long term capital investments. When there’s a monthly bill tied to performance, you can be sure your warehouse manager won’t have extra trucks sitting idle.
• Flexibility: perhaps the most significant reason to rent or lease is the flexibility it gives your business.  You won’t be making a large capital investment based on business predictions that may or may not materialize. Instead, you’ll be able to increase or decrease the number of lift trucks you have based on actual business conditions. 

Forklift Purchase

Renting or leasing lift trucks is not always the best option.  For some businesses it makes more sense to purchase forklifts instead of renting them. 

When does it make sense to buy a forklift? Here are some factors you should consider:

• Remote Facilities: If your business is a remote facility many hours outside of a major metropolitan area like Los Angeles, it may make more sense to have an in-house service team that handles maintenance and repair. In cases where your own team needs to handle maintenance, it makes more sense to buy vs lease.
• Special Requirements: In some cases, businesses may have special or unusual height or capacity requirements for equipment and won’t be able to find lift trucks for rent that suit them. In these situations it may be necessary to buy instead of rent.
• Facility Limitations:  sometimes buildings or pallet racking configurations may dictate that lift trucks require a custom intermediate mast. These have to be specified at the time of manufacture and generally won’t be available for rental.
• Unfluctuating Requirements: some businesses have very predictable, consistent needs and don’t need the flexibility of renting or leasing. In these cases it can be less expensive to purchase lift trucks with a scheduled maintenance program.
• Infrequent Use: if you have few lift trucks and they don’t get used very often, it makes more sense to purchase them since you won’t be able to take full advantage of maintenance and repair costs that are built in to rental prices. 

Where To Rent Or Buy Forklifts In Los Angeles

If you’d like a full analysis of forklift rental vs purchase for your Los Angeles material handling operation, you can speak with a professional at Raymond West by calling 562-944-8067.

If you’re anywhere in Southern California or Las Vegas, you can find us at these locations:

Los Angeles, CA
9939 Norwalk Blvd
Santa Fe Springs, California 90670
Phone: 562-944-8067

Ontario, CA
4602 E Brickell St.
Ontario, California 91761
Phone: 909-930-9399

San Diego, CA
12310 World Trade Dr
Ste 111
San Diego, California 92128
Phone: 858-679-1800

Valencia, CA
28309 Industry Dr
Valencia, California 91355
Phone: 661-206-0462

Las Vegas, NV
2555 E. Washburn Rd.
North Las Vegas, Nevada 89081
Phone: 702-651-6480