To buy or not to buy?
December 1st 2007

A vehicle rental company may be inclined to promote renting over purchasing, but TLS Vehicle Rental says it makes sense for contractors to look afresh at fleet rental

Have you looked at how you fund your vans and trucks lately? If the answer is no, then you fall very much into the majority of businesses in the cleaning industry, and elsewhere.

According to TLS Vehicle Rental ( which has 18,000 rental vans and trucks across the UK) the vast majority of companies never question the method they use to acquire vehicles – and need to take a 'back to basics' approach if they want to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

"There are three basic choices available to cleaning companies when they need a vehicle: buy; lease or rent," says Duncan Frame,TLS marketing and services leader. "Our research shows that the vast majority of businesses in this sector, like most other industries, opted for one of these some years ago and have never re-examined the issue."

Frame points out that even where businesses operating in the cleaning sector have made more detailed studies into vehicle funding at some point in time, the exercise is rarely repeated when the factors on which the decision was based have changed.

"It could be that a decision was taken a while ago to take vehicles on fixed mileage, three year leases because a cleaning company was tied into a long term contract.However, now that contract is probably complete and several much shorter term ones have taken its place.

Entering into three year agreements may not be such a strong move today."

The company has recently been encouraging businesses in the cleaning industry – and in other linked sectors such as health and safety and environmental services – to look at their vehicle funding in detail because its experience shows that most unbiased studies will lead to more van rental being used.

"The fact is that many companies look at their funding as a simple choice between buying or leasing. Both of these methods have their advantages but our mission – and it is one that has been gaining ground in recent years – is to get them to add rental to that choice list.

"Historically, rental has been looked at very much as a short term solution for van and truck needs but the truth is that the average length of rental has been increasing quickly in recent years and rentals of six months or longer now make up around half of our business.

"Of course, there are developments in short term rental by cleaning companies. For example,we are seeing increased hiring of relief vehicles for use when a customer's owned or leased van is being serviced – but longer-term rental is where we are seeing the biggest growth."

TLS has developed a range of tools to help companies make a more informed decision about their choice of funding method on its web site. Here, an interactive character, iVan, gives short, factual presentations about the factors that should be kept in mind before committing to a particular route.

"What we are trying to do is get potential customers in the cleaning industry to look at the factors behind their current choice of acquisition method and compare different options," concludes Frame.

"Our experience shows that, in these situations, rental often comes out as a good choice."