Financing expansion of your vehicle fleet

There may be times when the growth of your business is being held back by an inability to deliver orders that are coming in or getting the appropriate staff to onsite meetings – business expansion is hampered by a shortage of commercial vehicles.

Neither is it likely to be just a question of the number of commercial vehicles at your disposal.

The demand

In its Industry Outlook for 2019, the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) points to what it calls a “huge pent up demand” for electric freight vehicles.

It also underlines the increasing need for more commercial vehicles to help companies meet the new demands of small and medium sized enterprises and personal customers now using digital technology to make their purchases – and, often, expecting next-day delivery.

Funding the demand

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has warned that the major stumbling block for firms looking to develop and expand their commercial vehicle fleets is the lack of funding.

Indeed, many small and medium sized businesses have discovered that attempting to borrow from banks has become so complicated that only 13% of them are looking for any external funding at all at the moment. 70% of them are prepared to forego opportunities for expansion rather than search out difficult to get finance.

It doesn’t need to be like this, however, because alternative sources of funding are, in fact, available. Here at Forza Finance, we are in the business of ensuring your access to suitable and competitively priced commercial vehicle finance to enable the expanded business opportunities you are eager to create.

Expanding your vehicle fleet

We recognise that commercial vehicles come in a huge range of shapes and sizes – from vans to lorries, from pick-ups to panel vans, from drop-side to tractor units and drawbar HGVs, not to mention an equally wide range of specialist vehicles such as tankers, recovery vehicles, refrigerated units, buses and coaches.

Not only are they widely diverse but each one comes with a different price-tag – whether you are buying new or second-hand.

Your commercial vehicle finance needs to reflect both the price you are prepared to pay for each unit but also the type and cost of finance which suits the particular needs and circumstances of your own company:

Hire purchase

• hire purchase, for instance, offers a simple and straightforward way of spreading out the cost of your commercial vehicle over several years, in equal monthly instalments;
• there is typically a deposit of around 10% of the purchase price and there might or might not be a final balloon payment, but when the last instalment has been paid the vehicle is yours;

Lease purchase

• alternatively, you might want to structure your repayments differently, with the larger balance at the end of your finance agreement;
• in that case, you might pay a monthly fee representing the lease or hire of the vehicle and save the purchase balance until the end of the agreement – amounting to what is called its Minimum Guaranteed Future Value (MGFV);

Personal Contract Purchase (PCP)

• having proved itself the most popular form of finance for the private motorist, Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) is also available to finance the acquisition of your commercial vehicles;
• PCPs, of course, offer the advantage of flexibility – leaving you the option of simply using the vehicle throughout the course of the agreed 3 to 5-year contract period, but choosing not to complete the purchase at the end of it, but simply handing it back to the finance company with nothing more to pay.

Although you might have been put off by the wariness of other businesses to arrange external finance, if you want to expand your commercial vehicle fleet, we offer several alternatives – at what we believe are competitive market rates.

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