Keep Above
Buy or hire the trailer
A trailer is the classic buy-or-hire thing: owned, it sits ready and costs registration and tyres; hired, it costs a fee every time you tow. This calculator counts both ways over the same years and the same uses a year — owning's price, upkeep and eventual sale against hiring's per-hire fee and extras — and lands each on a cost per year and per use, with the break-even stated as a fact. No winner is declared.
Not counted while this is $0
After 5 years
Delivery, membership, deposits — not counted while $0
Put in what buying one would cost, and what one hire would cost. Nothing here is read from your budgets, and nothing is saved.
| Owning | Hiring | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid up front | — | — |
| Value lost | — | — |
| Hire fees | — | — |
| Other costs | — | — |
| Total over 5 years | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a use | — | — |
What does a trailer cost while it is parked?
Most of what a trailer takes, it takes standing still. Where trailers are registered it carries that registration and whatever periodic check applies whether or not it is ever towed, tyres and lights age on the driveway, and it occupies a space that is only free if you happen to have one. Hiring turns all of that into a fee that exists on the days you tow and on no others.
A trailer's uses also tend to be spread thin and spread long — a couple of loads a year, over as many years as it lasts — rather than concentrated. One heavy month, a move or a renovation, is a different shape, and entering it as an ordinary year's usage would describe a trailer being towed far more than it really is.
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
Owning and hiring separate over years rather than weeks, so the useful question is what a balance would look like that far out — which budgeting apps forecast your balance, and how far ahead.
About this calculator
What counts as upkeep for a trailer?
Whatever a year of ownership would take whether or not it gets used — registration where it applies, insurance, tyres and lights as they age, and storage if it would occupy paid space. The box takes a single yearly figure; at $0 it simply isn't counted.
What would one hire include here?
Whatever a single hire actually costs door to door — the day rate, and any per-hire extras a depot charges. Yearly costs that don't attach to a single hire, like a membership, belong in the extras-a-year box instead. Bonds that come back aren't a cost and stay out.
What is the crossing point?
The number of tows a year at which the two totals would land on the same figure, over the years you set. It is a position in the arithmetic and marks nothing else. If owning nets to nothing once the resale comes off, or the yearly extras on the hiring side already pass owning's whole total, there is no crossing to report and the page says which of the two happened.
Does registration go in upkeep or in the price?
In upkeep, along with everything else a parked trailer takes in a year — a periodic roadworthiness check where one applies, insurance, and the tyres and lights that age whether or not it is towed. The price box is the purchase on its own. Keeping the two apart is what lets the sale value at the end come off the purchase rather than off a year of standing still.