Hire or buy?
The question that comes before every other one. The manufacturer would rather you bought and the hire company would rather you hired. We are a directory, we earn nothing either way, and these guides are written on that basis - including a calculator that uses your quotes rather than our guesses.
Should you hire or buy a trailer?
Trailers are the category where buying wins soonest, because a galvanised trailer barely depreciates and a used one sells quickly. The real question is rarely the money - it is whether you have somewhere legal and secure to keep it, and whether your vehicle and licence can tow the one you actually need.
Should you hire or buy power tools?
Tools split cleanly in two. Anything you will use repeatedly and can carry in one hand is usually worth owning. Anything heavy, specialised or needing a certificate to operate is usually worth hiring, however cheap the purchase price looks, because the cost you are comparing against is not just the tool.
Should you hire or buy plant machinery?
For most people and most machines, hire wins - and it keeps winning far longer than in any other category. Plant depreciates, needs servicing to a schedule, needs transporting to site, needs insuring, and needs somewhere to live between jobs. Ownership only starts making sense at high, steady utilisation, which is a much higher bar than it sounds.
Should you hire or buy a van or specialist vehicle?
Vans are the category where the answer depends least on the vehicle and most on how you are taxed and financed. For occasional use, hire is straightforwardly cheaper. For daily use it becomes a question of purchase against lease against contract hire, and the right answer often has more to do with your accountant than your mileage.
Should you rent storage or buy a container?
Renting a unit and buying a container solve the same problem in opposite ways. Renting buys you flexibility, security and somebody else's land. Buying a container is cheaper over years, but only if you have somewhere lawful to put it - and that, rather than the price, is what decides it for most people.