Wouldn't just buying a truck for the company be cheaper than a whole employee?

Lots of reasons that I didn't at that time. I didn't want to deal with the hassle of purchasing and maintaining a truck and didn't have a place to park it. I wasn't going to park it at my house and didn't want to use one of my two parking spots at my warehouse.

We weren't doing things the buttoned up proper way at the time but most small businesses cut corners to make things work. You can go broke being excessively compliant.

I would imagine someone without a truck was let go instead. It's just the delta between a him and a truck-less employee, not a whole employee.

If the company owns the truck, they then have to get insurance for it, and to get reasonably priced insurance, they will likely need to run background checks on everyone allowed to drive it.

It is much less hassle and money to throw a few bucks an hour at the guy who is willing to use his own to run the errands if thr company doesn't need the truck for anything else.

There are liability and insurance concerns with having your employees use their own vehicles for company work as well.

That does not go away.

I mean, the employee presumably isn't adding zero value. Maybe he's not as great as someone else, but his truck tips the scales just over the line in his favor?