Three reasons for your small business to consider van hire in 2019

Recently an industry outlook report has put forward that the newer generation of customers for small businesses are beginning to be compelled by the benefits of van hire, such as the risk management and cash flow.

With the new opportunities and challenges brought by the New Year, business owners, as well as their fleet, should learn to be adaptable.

In this article we will point out three main reasons why you should include commercial van hire among your New Year’s resolutions: namely, cash flow, vehicle reliability, and flexibility.

Cash flow

There is a notable trend among today’s businesses owners to move away from owning vehicles and opting to take advantage of the benefits of van hire. This allows them keep hold of more of their cash. Owning vehicles yourself, obviously, implies a significant investment, however it is also an option that can be avoided by opting for a more flexible and less risky alternative.

For example, investing in your own fleet begs the question: how much of your capital is going to be tied up in this? Capital, namely, which could perhaps be invested more profitably in other areas of your business?

In addition to tying up your available cash, buying vehicles outright will also inevitably involve additional maintenance and repair costs which you will have to foot the bill for yourself.

Vehicle hire, on the other hand, replaces the initially large capital investment with a much cheaper fixed outgoing fee, and you will also not need to worry about any additional costs for repairs or maintenance as this will be taken care of by the vehicles’ owners.

Reliability

It is quite common for business owners to leave their vehicles unused during holiday periods when many of their employees have time off. Even short periods of being out of use like this can lead to problems with your vehicles like flat batteries, especially in the month of January. Apparently RAC patrols this January had to deal with more than 10,000 breakdowns, and flat batteries accounted for over a quarter of these cases.

So with your own vehicles you will responsible for the additional maintenance of ensuring your fleet hits the roads in January without interruptions like this. Opting for van hire, on the other hand, removes this burden from you onto the van provider, saving you not only money but the stress of managing this unpredictable situation yourself. Most contracts for commercial van hires nowadays include such maintenance and roadside assistance costs as standards, so you are relieved of dealing with the problem altogether and can focus on more productive aspects of your business.

Flexibility

To support the growth of their small businesses, owners will also need to develop or enlarge their vehicle fleet along with their business. On the other hand, the growth of a business is not always a straight shot upwards, but will experience dips as well as rises over time.

Opting for van hire, then, allows for more flexibility in the size of your fleet needed at any particular time. On the one hand, one can enlarge their fleet at any time without an extremely large investment, and on the other one can reduce its size without dealing with the problems arising from leaving vehicles unused for long periods of time.

So, avoiding upfront costs and the stress of managing vehicle maintenance, as well as the simplicity of adapting the size of your fleet to your given situation, are all great reasons to consider van hire as an alternative to ownership.