You won’t pay any if the lease was set up correctly at the beginning. Penalties and adjustments at lease end are always a matter of usage that wasn’t anticipated when the lease was originally set up.

The leasing company is typically planning on a certain vehicle value at lease end. That value is going to be driven by mileage, condition, and changes in used vehicle markets. In each of these cases, it’s the job of the leasing company to:

• Ask the right questions up front
• Understand your usage
• Have a deep enough perspective about commercial vehicles in general to put your usage in context
• Accurately forecast future used vehicle market conditions

If you’re paying a lot at lease end, then one of three things happened… either your usage changed along the way, you didn’t give the leasing company an accurate picture of your usage upfront, or the leasing company simply took shortcuts/didn’t do their job right (or maybe didn’t understand what their job was all along).

That paragraph above pretty much encapsulates the value of what leasing companies do, and why it is vital to hire a leasing company with experienced, knowledgeable people with a long history in the industry.

Expertise is dead. All of us can look up any damned thing in an instant. What has value is perspective, and perspective is only gained through years and decades of experience.

In the leasing industry, since vehicles are usually replaced on three or four year cycles, twenty years of experience is often only five or six trade cycles. Three years of experience is… well, not much. Anyone can lease you a vehicle. Only those with decades of experience can keep you out of trouble at the end.

To help get an idea of money and fees up front, check this out.