Benefits of Short-Term Forklift Rentals

Across industries, companies need every competitive edge they can get. As everyone pores over their balance sheets and all aspects of their business to find advantages, it pays to explore and compare the costs of renting or leasing equipment against the expenses of buying and owning it.

Forklifts (diesel or gas), stackers, tow tractors, reach trucks uninterruptible power supplies and other equipment are essential to various businesses. However, like any other department or resource, they can and must be streamlined for maximum efficiency and versatility.

Regardless of how businesses and companies differ in their size, purpose and structure, downtime is out of the question. Businesses cannot afford to have their mission-critical assets to be ill-matched for the task or sit idle and unused.

If you’re thinking about the need for the equipment in terms of years, that can be an indicator that you’re moving towards a purchase, unless, of course, you’ll have little or no use for the machine after the current project or set of jobs.

Many industries can benefit from renting equipment rather than buying it, and these include:

• Automotive
• Construction
• Government
• Rigging
• Military/Defence
• Recycling
• Retail
• Trucking
• Waste
• Events

Companies and people rent equipment for a number of reasons:

• Saves money in many cases
• Caters to short-term equipment needs
• Provides speciality performance
• Satisfies temporary production increases
• Fills in when regular machines need maintenance or fail
• Helps meet deadline crunches
• Expands machine inventory
• Increases overall capability when and where needed
• Eliminates responsibility of testing, maintenance and service
• Makes the project schedule easier to manage with on-demand resources

The rental of equipment can enable a bigger company to augment its fleet when and where needed, while it can help small- or medium-sized companies to propose work that requires special equipment or machines to fulfil the requirements.

Rental options can fill in during an outage or emergency and provide flexibility.

1.      Forgo the Upfront Investment

Equipment is an expensive capital cost that must be planned and might require a “good year” (or a couple) to come about. When you purchase a piece of capital equipment, your money is tied up in it until you sell it, and if you used it well and kept it long, sale offers might come in lower than you’d like. Not having a large chunk of money tied up in a piece of capital equipment frees up funds for you to pursue opportunities and maintain other important parts of the business.

2.      Decrease Long-run Expenses

In many cases, companies have maintenance teams or equipment consultants devoted to the upkeep and regular service of the machines, which is necessary for fault-free operation. Mechanics must check fluids and hydraulics, service must happen regularly, parts must be changed, technology needs upgrading, sometimes leaks happen and the scheduling for usage and transport represents challenges. You can gauge rental fees, while the expense of maintenance and service in private ownership typically tends to be less predictable.

Beyond the hard numbers sit a good deal of other considerations, such as safety, quality, efficiency, compliance, growth, risk, and other factors that affect business but don’t have a hard number attached to them. Individual companies will each value the softer factors differently, but they are all worth considering.

Goscor Lift Truck Company, part of the Goscor Group of Companies, has been providing forklifts and warehousing equipment solutions to the market since 1984.

We offer a wide range of forklifts with flexible short-term rental options to suit your needs.  Let us help you select the right solution for your application.