Get More From Your Rental Store: The Rent vs Buy Equation with Patrick Tunnicliffe, RentalWise.
August 19, 2026
Should I rent it or should I buy it? We use a huge variety of construction equipment on our jobsites. But too often we leave money on the table because we leave our decisions about ownership and usage to intuition. When you look at the real cost spreads between owning and renting different kinds of equipment with different strategies, the marginal differences can run into tens of thousands of dollars per year. Patrick Tunicliffe, a rental industry consultant, explains to Canadian Contractor editor, Patrick Flannery, how to think about renting versus buying and how to do the calculations to figure out what works best for each job. Amazingly, he also explains how the equipment you use can stop being a cost to your business and instead turn into a lucrative profit centre! The Rent v.s Buy equation is part of Get More From Your Rental Store, Canadian Contractor’s special feature week hosted in partnership with the Canadian Rental Association.
