Good idea. Prices aren't bad: (last I checked)

Home Depot rental truck prices start at $19 for the first 75 minutes, and then $5 for every 15 minutes thereafter.

So 3 hours would only be $59... assuming it's unlimited mileage.

Comparing to U-haul, which charges $1/mile, for $59, you could drive 40 miles, for the whole day.

Either way, doing this once a month costs under $1000/yr. Saving on gas, loan payments, and maybe insurance.

>assuming it's unlimited mileage

It's not. Add $.70-$1.09 per mile for mileage.

Maybe that's regional? HomeDepot.com shows this for me:

> Unlimited mileage on all vehicles

Right. So drive thirty minutes in one direction, rent a truck, drive home, pick up the lawnmower, take it to the shop (for instance), then take the truck back, then drive home. Then do it again in a week when the lawnmower is fixed.

Or have a truck.

How big is your lawnmower? Mine fits in the boot of my car.

Let's not get hung up on details. That was an example. Replace "fix lawnmower" with "pick up sheet rock" or "take broken water heater to the dump" or "buy a recliner" if you'd prefer.

Sure, but rural or not, most people don't do that sort of thing most of the time. Saying "I need a big vehicle" for the odd large load is just a smokescreen.

I don’t understand the logic of having a vehicle dedicated to a once per year at most use in your example.

I recently worked out the cost of owning a truck (including insurance, maintenance, and expected depreciation, but excluding the cost of the truck itself) versus renting from U-haul/Penske. I found that for more than 4-6 trips per year, owning is probably more economical. And that's assuming the truck is sitting in the driveway unused for the rest of the year; if your family also requires a secondary passenger vehicle, then owning a sedan and a truck almost certainly makes more sense than owning two sedans and occasionally renting a truck.

> but excluding the cost of the truck itself

Why would you exclude this on a cost analysis comparison?

When you make the purchase, you're exchanging $x for resalable equipment that's presumably worth $x. Your bank account balance goes down quite a lot, but the only decrease to your net worth is from the taxes and title transfer fees. Your net worth goes down as the vehicle depreciates. Even if you drive it to the very end of its operable life, you'll still get a bit of money from the junkyard you sell the vehicle's corpse to.

This does ignore the time that needs to be spent buying the vehicle, transferring the title, obtaining insurance, etc, which is significant. But procuring a rental truck is also time-consuming; on a typical Spring/Summer/Fall weekend where I live, you're lucky if you're able to get one at all. The local hardware stores are first-come/first-served, and can't guarantee over the phone that they'll have a rental truck available by the time you arrive.

It ignores and simplifies a lot of options for that money to be parked somewhere else instead of having a huge passive.

A truck will cost you what, US$ 50k? What are the opportunity costs of having this money parked on an ever depreciating passive? The depreciation only shows the net result of the purchase but completely disregards that you could use this money for investing somewhere else with a better return. Not only assets or financial instruments, I'm considering even quality life improvements such as home improvements, etc.

You are moving the goalposts with new issues such as availability of rentals, these might even be caused by you and everyone else buying a truck instead of renting when needed. More demand for rentals, more trucks for rentals.

It works quite well here in European cities to depend on rentals for DIY stuff, no one is buying a truck just do their own renovations or construction...

Considering just the depreciation is very simplistic, it doesn't capture all the other stresses and time-consuming processes of buying, selling, as you mentioned. I'd prefer to rent a truck once every two months instead of dealing with all the paperwork, insurance, maintenance and so on. This is wasted time.

> A truck will cost you what, US$ 50k?

I paid $600 for my first truck back in high school, drove it for a couple years, and received something in the ballpark of $100 from the scrapyard I sold it to in the end. In the current market where I live, ~$3k can get you a truck with no mechanical deficiencies and a few years of life remaining. Financially, I wouldn't advise anyone to shell out $50k for a new F-250, but some people enjoy saving money and others enjoy shiny new vehicles.

There's nothing wrong with buying $3k worth of VYM instead, and using the dividends to subsidize your rental truck costs. It's probably the better decision if you move things only 1-5 times per year, no maintenance obligations, and more free space in your driveway. If you move things more frequently than that, you enjoy the buying process, and you dislike the complexity of renting, then the calculus reverses.

Difference in lifetime-cost of vehicle should absolutely be part of calculation. It really makes no sense not to include it on all options.