Car Hire & Rental vs. Car Leasing & Contract Hire; FAQs
Car rental (aka car hire) is a very popular industry here in the UK, as customers look for short-term solutions for visiting their families, going on holiday or for using vans to move house. The renting of a vehicle is very much different to what we offer here at CarLease UK. For individual customers, car hire offers a daily or weekly solution for using a car, with the option to include insurance (and not maintain the vehicle). Car hire is without doubt much more expensive than long-term contract hire solutions which you can find here on CarLease UK but, as you can hand the vehicle back at anytime, car hire is very much a flexible offering when compared to contract hire and car leasing.
For a business, car hire can be a great way to offer a new employee a 3-6 month option while under their probation period.
With contract hire, as the minimum period is 2 years, if the employee was unsuccessful during the probationary period, the company would have to either keep the vehicle for another member of staff or organise an early termination. Terminating a vehicle under a contract hire arrangement will vary from finance company to finance company.
In some cases a finance company will charge you an amount equivalent to half of the remaining rentals whereas as other finance companies will charge the full amount remaining.
In addition to this, the vehicle will be inspected at the point of collection and the company will be liable for any excess mileage or damage which exceeds the fair wear and tear guidelines. Therefore, for a company, car hire may be an ideal solution in the shorter term to avoid some of these minor issues.
Moving forwards, when an employee has been settled, you can organise a longer term solution in the form of contract hire. While you cannot include insurance (as per car hire) you can include the cost of all servicing, maintenance and replacement tyres (breakdown recovery in some cases). This is known as a “funder-maintained” arrangement. If you want to create position where you are just fuelling and insuring the vehicle, this is the method for you.
Find the best contract hire deals here on our website… or learn more about leasing a car here in our help and advice pages…