Renting vs. buying a tractor

[rancar]

<font color=blue>I always try to rent on a Saturday, because they don't expect it back until Monday - you get an extra day to use your 8 hours</font color=blue>

What's even better is if you a) can rent during slow times of the year and b) have friends that have corporate accounts at these rental places. These corporate accounts can usually qualify for a 10-20% discount on the rental.

In the first instance, I recently rented a Cat dozer at a local tractor rental yard for a Saturday, 1-day rental. Because this time of year was slow the rental yard dropped the dozer off at my place on a Friday around noon. My operator was able to work the dozer for 5 hours Friday afternoon, 9 hours on Saturday (the day I paid for), and another 8 hours on Sunday before the dozer was picked up on Monday morning. All told, I got 22 hours of work out of the dozer for a 1-day rental. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

In the second instance, I rented the dozer through my good neighbor who did the actual rental on his corporate account. He (and I) received an approximate 12% reduction in the rental price.

.....Bob

 

[pruntyc]

Renting a dozer and renting a tractor are to different things. The dozer you probably wouldn't want, for you wouldn't need it that much. But the tractor you can use all year, year after year. And if you buy it, it is still worth some money, if you come to the place you don't need it anymore. No one seems to figure that into the cost of renting verses owning. Owning is better.

 

[rancar]

<font color=blue>Renting a dozer and renting a tractor are to different things.</font color=blue>

Totally agree....but the point I was making and I think it applies to whether one rents a dozer or a tractor is to a) rent it for a Saturday but getting an extra 1-2 days with the rental and b) looking for discounts on the rental price (in my case it was renting the dozer on my neighbor's corporate account).

.....Bob

 

[mdbarb]

I havn't read thru all the responses so forgive if I repeat. We dealt with this dilema for a couple years not being able to make the numbers really justify the purchase. Now that we own one, its always here I get to do the work at MY pace. perhaps alittle now, alittle in the morning, if I have an *** to spare I can work on a little something plus I have it around to make life easier when I wouldn't necessarily go rent it i.e. move something very heavy over 6".
Actually as I think about it, this may be the only large purchase where I have NOT had some form of buyers remorse.

 

[frank_f15]

two totally different things, renting a dozer for a spefic job is one thing, renting a tractor numerous times is a different story. if he is going to use 150 hr, a year i think he should buy it, don't froget to factor in the convenience of having the tarctor at his beck and call for small jobs. MHO

 

[rancar]

Again, I repeat....I AM NOT raising an issue between buying a tractor vis-a-vis a dozer. It's unthinkable for most folks to even contemplate buying a dozer when they run $70-100K minimum. This price extreme excludes most everyone from purchasing a dozer except commercial interests and I am not advocating purchase consideration of a dozer.

The only issue I am raising in this thread applies to when one wants to rent. And the point I make again is a) whatever one rents (tractor or dozer), rent for the one day Saturday rental and get another 1-2 days free and 2) look for discounts off the rental price when available. Both of these rental condition parameters will apply in most circumstances whether one rents a dozer or a tractor.

.....Bob

 

[Anonymous Poster]

tractor_guy: The following assumes rental vs new purchase.
1) If you have a quantifiable amount of work for a specific type of equipment over a finite amount of time it is always cheaper to rent. Anyone who claims otherwise has no grasp of cost accounting.
2) If you have open ended work of various types over an indefinite time period it is probably cheaper to purchase-though the specifics would need to be examined.
3) Purchasing used, if you are lucky (and skilled) is usually cheaper than buying.
4) rancor's advice (and some others) of renting over week-end's etc is in most cases right on the money.
5) If buying, you have much more than the initial cost, depreciation, etc. to consider. Most states require you to pay them off for permission to purchase (sometimes called sales tax). In addition, many states run a shakedown racket whereby you must report ownership of vehicles, tractors, etc. and pay them year after year after year just for permission to continue to own it (sometimes called personal property tax). In addition, you have the issue of cost of capital-even if you pretend to yourself you are getting so-called "interest free" financing, you are most certainly not as you would find out very quickly if you lay the cash on the table after discounting imputed interest. Further, you have opportunity cost of tying up money in a depreciating piece of equipment. Further, if you consider actual (real) money cost, when you buy is very relevant-and few consider that issue. In real money (gold dollars-a gold dollar is more or less 1/20 of an ounce of gold) the prices of goods go up and down over the decades-they were extremely high in the 1960's, very low in the early 1980's and have been going up in the 1990's. As this is written the prices of tractors are coming down somewhat from recent very, very costly levels. I would be willing to wager anyone that the price of a given tractor will be much lower a few years from now. So . . . if you put that money away in gold coin savings, it will take many fewer coins to purchase the tractor in a few years.
6) That said, we are talking strictly economics here-which was tractor_guy's question, the issue of "handiness", the personal "satisfaction" of having a tractor sitting around, etc. are all non-economic issues, but still very important. Tractors, like much in life, are purchased for personal psychological pleasure. JEH

 

[pruntyc]

Mine was bought because I got too old to do it the hard way I had been doing it. when you are pushing 70, who wants to spend all his time with yard tractor, and hopeing someone else will help on his drive. More fun to be on the computer some like now. And with my used tractor I can do that. If I would decide to move to town, I can sell it and get most of my money back, and enjoyed it while here. So I didn't buy mine for psychological pleasure, but to get a job done, that I was finding too hard to do any other way. Although I had been doing it up till I bought it, but it got harder every year.

 

[Rick Jay]

I have to take the side of owning as being better than renting. I only put about 30 hours per year on my B2910 and I think over my lifetime, it'll be well worth it. If I made a decision based purely on $/hour, there's no way I could justify it.

Also, if owning is what you would prefer to do, there is a certain "pride of ownership" that is of an intangible value.

What I have to suggest next, please take with a grain of salt, 'cause I have very little experience in this type of equipment. But I surmise that every tractor has a bit of a "learning curve" associated with it. To really get good, you need to practice. With renting, you might get a different machine each time, so you might not be as productive as if you had your own tractor.

Also, it might never come to pass, but with a rental, you might try to rush through a job to get the tractor back in time to save some $$$. It's often in those times that a mistake is made, something goes wrong, gets broken, or worse, someone gets hurt. Not that injuries couldn't happen if you owned the equipment, but I think infamiliarity and haste could increase the possibility of an accident or injury.

As someone else pointed out, on TBN, most of us will recommend buying, if at all possible.

Good Luck.

~Rick

 

[frank_f15]

WELL SAID!!!! I ALSO BOUGHT my bota, cause the old ford was getting to hard to handel and i am just a youngester at 61, but age does take its toll so i too enjoy getting a job done and then playing at computer, so much easier and warmer/cooler depending on the time of year/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif