Costs of lorry / trailer own / hire

[Leam_Carrie]

My horse is at a new yard with nothing in hacking distance so thinking about options. Can you give me an idea of costs:
- Monthly cost of owning an older box (guess I’ll have a £10k ish budget)
- Cost of being taken to a show / clinic by a transporter (if there are multiple from the same yard do you split the same code?)
- Cost of self-drive hire for a show / clinic

Thanks everyone.

 

[Cowpony]

I've got a 6.5t lorry and there is no way it makes any economic sense at all to own one! Self drive hire around here is about £100. - 120 per day, which is much cheaper. But I knew I'd never go out if I had to hire.

 

[Red-1]

I'm the same, pay much more to own than it would be to hire. But, I would never hire if I had to pay per time. As it is, the little box is here so I pop one on just to drive to a friend's to go hacking.

 

[Tiddlypom]

If you're happy to tow, a trailer costs nothing in upkeep if it's sitting around doing nothing. You do need a suitable tow vehicle, but if you can use the tow car as your regular car then you don't have to tax and insure a second vehicle.

A horsebox is nicer, but costlier.

 

[milliepops]

Vastly depends if you have anyone tame to do your maintenance or not.
I don't pay a lot to keep my 7.5t on the road outside of tax and insurance as OH keeps it up together. He did my 3.5t too. My lorry is cheaper to tax than my car and the insurance isn't much different either. but you need a good vehicle to start with as they can be money pits. We just put mine on a much newer chassis and the whole thing came in under your budget OP but that's only because i wasn't paying any labour

Self drive here is about £100 a pop, i used to do it a lot before i had my own lorry but it adds hours onto every trip to go and collect/return so i would only do that now if there was somewhere close. it's about a 2hour round trip to get to my nearest hire now, the one i used previously has stopped self drive. I've used a pro transporter a few times in the last couple of years and that was £££.

as above if you have a suitable car then a trailer would probably be the most cost effective option. i wouldn't want to be without my lorry now even just for convenience and knowing i can cart someone off to horspital immediately if necessary, what price peace of mind.....?

 

[Sussexbythesea]

It somewhat depends on how often you use it. I use my 3.5t a fair bit so I don’t think it’s more expensive if you price it per use.

I found hiring a pita. You have to know weeks if not months in advance as they get booked out especially at weekends. The last time I hired with driver for day it was about £200. Minimum around £80-100 a time. Self-drive there are big deposits and if you damage the lorry potentially quite hefty costs.

I got my lorry a year ago and it’s been fabulous and it’s given me the freedom to able to do loads of different things. I had a 6.5t a few years ago and that was more expensive.

 

[Leam_Carrie]

Thanks everyone. Currently have a fiesta and a driveway only good for smaller cars, so I think a trailer is out (also probably due to my lack of reversing ability).
Physiologically the problem with hiring is that seems a lot to do a clinic or couple of dressage tests, where as having your own you could go out most weeks (but is that affordable with the vehicle).
Sounds like ideal is a few girls at the yard wanting to go…

 

[janietee_5]

Think about the cost of having your own vs self drive hire. We did the sums and for 2 outings a month it was cheaper to hire taking into account the cost of buying and running a 3.5t lorry. We are incredibly lucky that our YO has a fleet of 3 self drive available. We couldn’t afford to buy such nice and reliable lorries (Bloomfields) so hiring is a no brainer. Obviously can’t do anything on the spur of the moment and have to plan ahead, but definitely worth it.

 

[RHM]

Local to me (West Yorkshire) hiring is £100-120 per day, plus the added time of picking up and dropping off etc.
transporter min cost is £60 for something very local up to £150 for within a hour drive.
My 3.5 ton cost £23k to buy and this year cost £380 to get through MOT, repairs £400, around £400 for insurance and breakdown cover , tax just over £20 a month.

I could never go back to not having transport now. You enter so much more things, can do spur of the moment activities if the weather is nice etc. I love not having to plan months in advance. I am out min twice a week in mine though so may not be worth it if you plan on using it less.

 

[Squeak]

It does depend hugely on how much you use it. I generally use mine twice a week so it's a lot cheaper than hiring and I'd be stuck without it. It also did the majority of the furniture moving when we moved house, saving us a good few hundred and is used if we need to pick up something bigger from somewhere too so is quite useful.

 

[dorsetladette]

We have a 7.5t which like @milliepops my OH maintains. It's pretty cheap to keep on the road (insurance £175/year and tax £20/month) but you do need a good lorry to start with or the costs of repair can be eye watering. We just did a 820 mile round trip which cost £360 in fuel. So not the most economic. We use it a lot though, not necessarily for competitions (or even horses) but it does get used. We also stay in it a fair bit when we have things to do at the yard. We finish up have a bbq and a few beers and don't have to worry about driving home.

Locally the hire rate is about £75 a day with a limit of 200miles then £1 a mile after that.

 

[Muddy unicorn]

We already had a car we could tow with so buying a trailer was by far the most economical way to transport my daughter’s horse around. We were much more likely to do spur of the minute things eg he used to get worried about indoor arenas so I’d hire an indoor and take them there after school - we probably wouldn’t have done that if we’d had to hire/pick up/return etc etc.

It cost £150 to get it serviced every year, insurance was about £120 a year and I sold it for slightly more than I’d bought it for. I would love to have a small lorry but I couldn’t justify spending the amount of money needed to get something safe and relatively maintenance-free on one child’s hobby ..

 

[HuskyFluff]

I've just been quoted £120 for someone (proper co., fully insured etc) to drive me to a show and then pick me up later. But then, at the moment I don't go out much so that's definitely much more cost effective

 

[chaps89]

Hiring now is about £100 a day 8am-5pm, plus diesel on top of course (but you’d have that in your own box anyway)

I ran my own 3.5t for about £150pcm (not including the purchase cost, thankfully I didn’t have any finance to buy it) which did include putting a bit to one side for basic maintenance/service/MOT - anything major would have had to be funded seperately.

I used my box anything from 1-3 times a week and often at unsocial hours so it worked really well for me.

When I dropped down to using it once a month I sold it - they don’t like sitting around and the cost was comparable to a single hire and there would be no big bills to hit me, plus it freed up the capital in it which has since been handy.

Hiring a box is a PITA but if you only go out occasionally it’s definitley cheaper.