How construction crews, last-mile operators, and seasonal businesses pair a core lease with project rentals, and how it changes the math on seasonal demand
Spring arrives, and so does the crunch. Contracts land, demand spikes, and suddenly your current fleet isn't enough. You need more trucks, more vans, more wheels on the road. But unfortunately, those vehicles aren't waiting in a lot for you. Right now, lead times for new pickups and light commercial vans across Canada sit at 12-15 weeks, and that's on a good model in a stable year, based on Foss National Leasing fleet data, Q1 2026.
For fleet managers and business owners in construction, landscaping, and other industries with irregular demand, this is a familiar headache. Your business has a seasonal pulse. And that pulse accelerates every spring.
If you build your fleet around peak demand, you're paying for trucks that sit idle every off-season. If you build it around base demand, you're scrambling every time work picks up.
Neither approach is good for your total cost of ownership (TCO). The first inflates your balance sheet with depreciating assets. The second costs you contracts.
Some managers try to solve the problem by pre-ordering vehicles in advance. This is a smart strategy if your project pipeline is perfectly predictable. But what if it is not? Win more work than expected? You're short. Miss a few contracts? You're sitting on assets you don't need. In a market shaped by seasonal demand scaling, fixed solutions carry real risk. There's a better way to think about this.
How to scale your fleet for seasonal demand?
Lease your base line vehicles. Use short-term leasing to flex. That way, you keep your permanent vehicles right-sized for your core operations, and you bring in work-ready units within days, not months, when demand spikes.
What is a project rental?
A project rental is a month-to-month vehicle lease arranged through a fleet management company, with no early termination fees, commercial mileage allowances, and work-ready vehicle configuration.
Not every fleet decision looks the same. The comparison that matters depends on your sector and how your business acquires vehicles today.
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★ Peak demand
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Core Fleet
|
|
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Project Rental |
Business Lease |
Retail Rental |
Ownership |
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| Upfront Cost | ✓ None | ✓ Low | ✓ None | ✗ High |
| Flexibility | ✓ High | ✓ Predictable | ✓ High | ✗ Low |
| Best For | ✓ Surge demand | ✓ Core fleet | ✗ Personal use | ✗ Stable demand |
| Availability | ✓ Days | ✓ Factory ordering | ✗ Fast but not work ready | ✗ Weeks |
| Wear & Tear | ✓ Commercial | ✓ Commercial | ✗ Consumer | ✗ Owner bears all cost |
Construction companies, for instance, have traditionally owned their light commercial fleet outright. You buy the truck, you run it hard, you sell it when it's done. The problem is that ownership ties up significant capital, and the total cost of ownership is higher than most owners realize.
Depreciation alone accounts for approximately 35-40% of TCO based on Foss National Leasing fleet cost data, 2025.
When you add insurance, maintenance, registration, and the opportunity cost of that capital, ownership starts to look a lot less efficient. And when your project ends early, you're stuck with an asset you're paying to park.
Short-term commercial vehicle rentals flip that equation. You pay for the vehicle while you're using it. When the contract closes, the vehicle goes back. No residual risk, no disposal headache, and no trucks sitting in your yard eating up costs.
Opposite to construction, most operators in last-mile delivery are already renting. The question is whether they're using the right kind of rental.
When fleet managers first reach for a vehicle to fill a gap, the instinct is often to call a retail rental company with daily or weekly rates. It is familiar, fast, and available. But those vehicles aren't built for commercial work, and the costs catch up with you quickly.
Here's what you run into when you put a retail rental van into a last-mile operation:
Retail rental companies have also reduced their commercial inventories significantly since 2020. Availability is tighter, rates are higher, and the vehicles are still configured for consumers. When you're running vans month after month, daily retail rates compound into a number that doesn't make sense for sustained operations.
Retail vs. commercial vehicle rental isn't just a pricing question. It's a question of whether the vehicle is actually ready for the work you're asking it to do.
Ryan Hartley, Operations Manager, Project Rentals
A commercial last-mile delivery van rental through a fleet provider is a different product. Work-ready configuration, a mileage policy that reflects actual commercial use (up to 5,000 kilometres per month), and a wear and tear standard built for the field. Foss integrates telematics directly into vehicles, giving you real-time visibility into fuel usage, driver behaviour, and maintenance needs across every vehicle in the program. That's the kind of operational data that helps you optimize fleet costs and justify fleet spend to your stakeholders.
Long-term leases are a natural fit for vehicles you need year-round. But landscaping, snow removal, and other seasonal businesses often need a surge of vehicles for four to six months, then see demand fall off sharply. Signing a three-year lease on that surge capacity means paying for vehicles during the months they're sitting.
A hybrid approach works much better here. Lease the vehicles your core crew uses year-round. Bring in short-term leasing for spring vehicle demand when your headcount and workload peak. When the season winds down, return the rentals. You pay for your actual use, nothing more.
No matter if you are in Ontario, Alberta or Nova Scotia, buying trucks ties up capital that could be used to pay your crew or fund your next bid. Long-term leases on surge vehicles mean paying for assets that sit idle half the year. Commercial fleet rentals solve both problems.
The businesses that are growing their fleets most effectively right now aren't the ones that own the most vehicles. They're the ones with reliable access to the right vehicles at the right time.
A hybrid fleet acquisition strategy, a core long-term lease anchored by flexible short-term lease, gives you the best of both worlds. Predictable costs on your permanent fleet. Speed and flexibility on the vehicles you need to chase opportunities.
What happens to your operation when supply chains stop moving?
When vehicle wait times across Canada exceeded a year, Amrize,a leading North American building solutions company, turned to Foss National Leasing for project rentals. They kept every project moving. Work-ready commercial vehicles, delivered within days, across multiple teams and multiple job sites.
That's what access looks like in practice. Not ownership of depreciating assets. Not a retail rental that wasn't built for your work. Access to the right commercial pickup for construction, the right last-mile delivery van rental, the right seasonal vehicle exactly when the season starts — and none of the cost when it ends.
Not sure where short-term rental fits in your fleet mix? We're happy to think it through with you. Talk to a Foss specialist.