The request that started it
First Monday of March 2024. Our operations manager walked over and dropped a printed request on my keyboard. The Carter lot project was starting April 1, and he needed a compact excavator and a skid steer on-site by the 18th.
Then our facilities supervisor appeared behind him. "And I need a bucket truck for the warehouse lighting," she said.
Let me clear one thing up for anyone who landed here by accident: the facilities supervisor is named Shelby. No one asked me to lease a "Shelby truck." I wrote that phrase in my own notes because my brain couldn't tell whether she was asking about a bucket truck or about the truck Shelby drives. She wanted a bucket truck. I only mention this because two people in our office still bring it up to embarrass me.
I'm the office administrator for a 180-person site-development contractor. Since 2020, I've managed purchasing across roughly 35 vendors. That amounts to about $1.1 million a year in equipment leases, parts, and everything else. We already owned two older Hyundai forklifts and had a decent relationship with the local Hyundai dealer. That relationship mattered because this was the first time I compared Hyundai lease deals side by side with a lower-priced brand.
The numbers pointed one way. My gut pointed the other.
Three dealers quoted on the skid steer and the compact excavator. The Hyundai lease deal came with higher monthly payments, but it included scheduled maintenance and a dealer that stocked Hyundai parts for the models we run. A regional brand came in roughly 18% cheaper with similar bucket sizes and lift heights on paper.
Finance liked the cheaper number. On paper, it was the right number. I went back and forth for a week. Part of me wanted the savings; another part remembered every spreadsheet that didn't have a line item for downtime. In the end, we made a compromise: the excavator was leased from Hyundai and the skid steer from the regional brand. The projected savings on the skid steer over 24 months was about $4,500. What could break on a skid steer?
For reference, all three quotes came from mid-March 2024 in the mid-Atlantic region. Lease deals change often, so treat the numbers as an example, not current pricing.
One small side note: we put company numbers and decals on both machines. The print shop that made the decals asked me to verify a Hyundai blue match before production. They work to a Delta E below 2 as the color tolerance for brand-critical colors, according to Pantone color matching guidelines. A Delta E between 2 and 4 is noticeable to trained observers, and above 4 it is visible to most people. They also printed our small asset labels at 300 DPI, the standard for commercial print readability. I never expected to learn about color tolerance during an equipment lease, but mismatched decals on a machine sitting in a customer's lot make the whole company look careless.
Week six
The skid steer lasted exactly six weeks. One afternoon, the operator sent a single photo: hydraulic fluid running down the frame where a hose assembly had let go. I called the regional dealer. The hose was on national backorder for fourteen business days. The skid steer sat in our yard like an expensive paperweight while the Carter crew waited.
The project manager rented a replacement skid steer from the Hyundai dealer. Not out of loyalty; it was simply the nearest rental counter with a unit available. Twelve days at $410 per day plus delivery came to $4,920. The projected savings on the cheaper lease disappeared in less than two weeks.
The same week, the Hyundai compact excavator threw a sensor code. A Hyundai technician arrived the next morning with the replacement sensor on his parts shelf and installed it under the lease maintenance plan. No invoice. No fourteen-day wait. That is what a Hyundai parts network is worth: a machine down for 48 hours instead of a machine down for two weeks.
What about the bucket truck?
I'm not an aerial-equipment specialist, so I'll say what I told Shelby directly: a bucket truck was not something we could source through our Hyundai construction equipment contact, and I wasn't going to pretend otherwise. Buying a bucket truck for a one-time warehouse lighting job would have been overkill.
We rented a 45-foot unit from a local aerial equipment company for two weekends. Cost: $2,150 including delivery. If you reached this article by searching for a "Shelby truck" or a bucket truck, this is not the spec sheet you need. I can't speak to platform capacities or outreach on those machines. What I can tell you from a procurement perspective is to get lift height, platform load, and access width in writing before comparing day rates.
The month after the sensor repair, one of our older Hyundai forklifts needed a starter motor. I ordered the part from the same dealer using the model and serial number, and it arrived the next morning. That parts availability is exactly why those older forklifts are still in service.
What I'd do differently
The lease payment comparison is "are you smarter than a fifth grader" math. Monthly payment times the term, plus the buyout, minus tax benefits. A fifth grader can run those numbers. The hard part is what doesn't fit on the spreadsheet: parts stock, service response time, and what happens when a hose bursts at 3:30 on a Friday. The machine being down is when the monthly payment stops mattering.
I don't think every Hyundai lease deal is right for every company. If you run a national fleet with your own shop and your own parts room, your math will look different. My experience is one mid-size contractor over four years, not an industry benchmark. But after watching a $4,500 projected saving turn into a $4,920 rental bill, I will never choose a lease on monthly cost alone again unless the dealer can show parts supply and service response in writing.
Next time, I'll also write down "bucket truck" instead of whatever my brain did with "Shelby." Some lessons are cheaper than others.
