Rent vs Buy an Excavator Comes Down to the Hours You Pay For
Renting versus buying an excavator: a Deere 35 P-Tier lists at $68,240, and owning one costs 14.4% to 17.6% of price a year on stated inputs.
Table of Contents
Rates and sources checked on October 31, 2026.
A new Deere 35 P-Tier compact excavator costs less to own than to rent once you would otherwise pay for about 21 to 34 rental days, 7 to 11 rental weeks or 2.6 to 4.3 monthly terms a year, before repairs, on MaineDOT’s 2025 bid rates for an 8,000-lb machine without an operator. A 50,000-lb Deere 210 P-Tier crosses the same line at about 11 to 19 rented weeks.
The hours that decide it are the rental periods on your invoices. Fuel and the operator cost the same whether you rent or own, so both sit outside every figure below. The inputs are Deere’s published list price, a public-agency discount and three stated assumptions you can swap for your own.
Count the rental time you would be billed for
A mini excavator rented for a week and run 12 hours still bills as a week. One shift on a Sunbelt Rentals contract means no more than 8 hours a day, 40 a week and 160 per four-week period, with a double shift billed at 150% and a triple shift at 200% of the rental charge on metered machines (Sunbelt Rentals US terms and conditions).
That cap is the conversion between rental time and machine hours. A break-even of eight rented weeks equals 320 meter hours only if every rented week ran its full 40. If your rented weeks average 20 meter hours, owning wins at 160.
The tables below count days, weeks and monthly terms first, with the meter-hour version beside them. To line up your hour-meter readings with your invoices, see how to count the meter hours and billed hours one machine logs in a year.
What a year of owning a Deere 35 P-Tier costs
The 35 P-Tier carries a base list price of $68,240 on Deere’s US price page for New York’s statewide heavy-equipment contract, dated March 6, 2026, with a 27% discount for public agencies buying through Sourcewell. That discount puts a public buyer at $49,815, so the two figures bracket what a new machine costs.
The build holds the machine five years. Depreciation is the price minus its resale value, spread over those years. Interest runs on the average value (price plus resale, divided by two) at the bank prime loan rate of 7.00% posted on October 27, 2026. Taxes, insurance and housing take 1% of that average value, the allowance in Iowa State’s machinery cost method, which was built for farm machines. Resale after five years is an assumption shown at three levels; no auction record for this model went into it.
| Resale after 5 years (assumed) | Depreciation, % of price a year | Interest at 7.00%, % of price a year | Taxes, insurance, housing, % of price a year | Owning cost, % of price a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60% | 8.0 | 5.6 | 0.8 | 14.4 |
| 50% | 10.0 | 5.25 | 0.75 | 16.0 |
| 40% | 12.0 | 4.9 | 0.7 | 17.6 |
Prime rate from FRED; housing, tax and insurance allowance from Iowa State A3-29; percentages are arithmetic from those inputs and the resale levels shown.
On Deere’s numbers, a year of owning the 35-size machine runs $7,173 to $8,767 at the agency price and $9,827 to $12,010 at list. Repairs are not in it yet.
Note: Deere’s figure is the base model without options, and the agency discount is a public-buyer price. A written purchase quote replaces both, and a loan rate above prime raises every line in the table.
Seven to 11 rented weeks for an 8,000-lb mini
On MaineDOT’s March 2025 bid from Eagle Rental for an 8,000-lb JD/Hitachi 35, renting costs as much as owning the 35-size Deere once you book 6.8 to 11.4 weeks a year.
| Billing period | MaineDOT rate, statewide, without operator, March 2025 | Break-even at $49,815 | Break-even at $68,240 | Meter hours at the one-shift cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daily | $350 | 20.5 to 25.0 days | 28.1 to 34.3 days | 164 to 274 |
| Weekly | $1,050 | 6.8 to 8.3 weeks | 9.4 to 11.4 weeks | 273 to 458 |
| Monthly | $2,800 | 2.6 to 3.1 terms | 3.5 to 4.3 terms | 410 to 686 |
Rates from MaineDOT bid tabulation PH20250212EXO, letting March 5, 2025. Break-evens divide the owning cost above by each rate; meter hours multiply by 8, 40 and 160.
Weekly rates in central Minnesota run higher. A 7,700-lb Bobcat E35 rents for $295 a day, $1,250 a week and $3,225 a month on RTL Equipment’s spring 2025 rate sheet for Big Lake and Brainerd. Against the Deere’s owning cost, that weekly rate puts the line at 5.7 to 9.6 weeks; the brand differs, the weight class matches. MaineDOT’s rates are winning bids in a state letting, and a private customer’s quote can land elsewhere.
A 50,000-lb excavator needs 11 to 19 weeks
Moving up to the 50,000-lb class pushes the line out by roughly four to eight weeks. The 210 P-Tier (base code 04E0FF) carries a $305,203 base list price on the same Deere page, or $206,012 after its 32.5% agency discount. A year of owning it at the percentages above comes to $29,666 to $36,258 for an agency buyer and $43,949 to $53,716 at list.
| Billing period | MaineDOT rate, JD/Hitachi 210, 50,000 lb, March 2025 | Break-even at $206,012 | Break-even at $305,203 | Meter hours at the one-shift cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daily | $900 | 33.0 to 40.3 days | 48.8 to 59.7 days | 264 to 477 |
| Weekly | $2,800 | 10.6 to 12.9 weeks | 15.7 to 19.2 weeks | 424 to 767 |
| Monthly | $6,700 | 4.4 to 5.4 terms | 6.6 to 8.0 terms | 708 to 1,283 |
Rates from the same MaineDOT bid tabulation (Eagle Rental, statewide); prices from Deere’s US price page on the New York contract.
At RTL’s $2,850 weekly rate for a 52,100-lb DX225 or SK210, the 210 P-Tier’s line sits at 10.4 to 18.8 weeks.
What does a rental contract add to the rate?
MaineDOT’s 2025 bids priced the same JCB 50Z, a 10,000 to 14,000-lb machine, at $150 a week and $298 a month lower when MaineDOT crews collect it than when Alta Equipment delivers it: $1,100 against $1,250 weekly and $2,500 against $2,798 monthly. That haul rides on every rental. An owner moves the machine on their own truck and trailer, which carries its own cost.
Lines to find on a rental contract before you set it against owning:
- the hour cap and the overtime or shift rate above it
- delivery and pickup, priced per trip
- the damage waiver, charged as a line of its own
- refueling when the machine comes back below full
- whether Saturdays, Sundays and holidays count as rental days
Each of these lands on rented days only, and none of them appears in the owning-cost table.
Before you sign: ask the rental desk to put the hour cap, the overtime rate and the delivery charge on the quote, then add them to the rate before dividing it into your owning cost.
Repairs, idle months and resale value
If you own the machine, every service interval, track and hydraulic repair comes out of your pocket, and none of the sources above prices repairs for these two models. Add a written planned-maintenance price for the hours you expect to run to the owning figure, then divide by the rental rate again. Emissions-system upkeep belongs on the same line; see what DEF and DPF upkeep add per hour on Tier 4 machines.
In this build, idle months lower nothing. Depreciation and interest run by the year, so a machine parked from December to March costs the same as one working.
Between 40% and 60% resale, the 35-size Deere’s weekly break-even shifts 1.5 weeks for an agency buyer and 2.1 weeks at list. For bigger machines, check what used 20-tonne-class excavators sell for at their hours before you settle on a resale figure.
All of the figures here are before tax. The Section 179 deduction limit for tax years beginning in 2026 is $2,560,000, reduced once qualifying property placed in service passes $4,090,000 (IRS Publication 946); how it applies to your purchase is your tax preparer’s call.
Pull last season’s rental invoices before you call a dealer
Start with what you paid, then price the purchase against it.
- Total last season’s rental invoices by billing period.
- Get two written rental quotes for the same weight class, each stating the hour cap and overtime rate.
- Get a written purchase quote for the machine you would buy and a written loan rate.
- Rerun the owning-cost percentages with that price, your resale estimate and the loan rate, add planned maintenance, and divide by each quoted rate.
If last season’s booked weeks fall below the figure step 4 gives you, renting cost less at those inputs. If the size is still open, start with how to pick the excavator size before pricing it; for a financed used mini, the loan side is in whether a loan payment works at your billed hours.
