Depends. You can build virtually anything into a lease, including maintenance. In fact, many leasing companies depend on revenue from maintenance to subsidize cheap leases.

It often makes a lot of sense to bundle maintenance into a lease for larger fleets. Smaller fleets aren’t the same.

Until you get to a size that exceeds fifteen units, it is extremely unlikely that paid fleet management or leases that include maintenance are useful to you.

Including maintenance in the lease is almost always more costly than just paying for it directly, because there is a management component built in, and a layer of technicians who approve the repairs made to your trucks. For most smaller guys, they’d just as soon make that decision themselves. So the question isn’t who is responsible (you are, always), but who is paying. And the answer is, you are, still. Funny how that works.

When you need help managing your repairs, then you need a lease that includes maintenance, but it’s not worth it for smaller fleets.

Okay, but what about insurance? We’ve got that topic covered here.