Commercial vehicle loan calculator
A work vehicle gets quoted two ways. A purchase loan with a rate and a term, or an equipment lease with a monthly payment and a buyout at the end. Most calculators price the first one and stop. This one prices both, then shows you the gap.
After tax, optional
Both numbers are yours. We don’t set either one, and neither decides whether a deduction reaches your purchase.
The number the other calculators skip
These are example figures, not yours. They’re arbitrary. They aren’t typical terms, an average, current market pricing, or a quote. Replace every one with numbers from your own lender and lessor.
- Price $60,000
- Down $10,000
- Loan 9% for 60 mo
- Lease $950/mo for 60 mo
- At signing $2,500
- Buyout $9,000
| Figure | Buy with a loan | Lease, then buy out | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash to own the vehicle | $72,275.07 | $68,500.00 | $3,775.07 more via the loan |
| Monthly payment | $1,037.92 | $950.00 | $87.92 more via the loan |
| Paid up front | $10,000.00 | $2,500.00 | $7,500.00 more via the loan |
The two routes differ in when the money leaves, not only in how much of it leaves. A lease keeps the monthly figure down and parks a large payment at the end. So a smaller monthly number with a buyout waiting is not automatically the cheaper way to own the thing.
Buying it with a loan
- Amount financed
- $50,000.00
- Monthly payment
- $1,037.92
- Total of payments
- $62,275.07
- Total interest
- $12,275.07
- Cash to own
- $72,275.07
Amount financed is the price less your down payment and trade-in, plus any fees you rolled in. Cash to own adds the down payment back, because that money left the business too. A trade-in isn’t cash, so it never gets added.
Leasing, then buying it out
- Total of lease payments
- $57,000.00
- Due at signing
- $2,500.00
- End-of-term buyout
- $9,000.00
- Cash to own
- $68,500.00
- Lease term
- 60 mo
A lease payment hides an interest rate, and the lessor sets it through the money factor. You can’t pull that rate back out of the payment without the factor itself, so this page compares cash outlay instead. Inventing a money factor here would be guessing, and we don’t do that.
Your after-tax figures
Same loan, different terms
Only the term changes below. The amount financed stays at $50,000.00 and the rate stays at 9%, so you can reproduce any row by hand.
| Term | Monthly payment | Total interest | Total of payments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 36 mo | $1,589.99 | $7,239.52 | $57,239.52 |
| 48 mo | $1,244.25 | $9,724.10 | $59,724.10 |
| 60 mo | $1,037.92 | $12,275.07 | $62,275.07 |
| 72 mo | $901.28 | $14,891.93 | $64,891.93 |
| 84 mo | $804.45 | $17,574.13 | $67,574.13 |
Adding to every payment
The full month by month loan schedule
| # | Payment | Interest | Principal | Balance |
|---|
For reference, the U.S. Prime Rate is currently 6.75% (source: Federal Reserve H.15, as of 2026-08-13). The Federal Reserve calls prime one of several base rates banks use to price short-term business loans. It isn’t a rate quoted to any individual borrower, and commercial credit is commonly priced as prime plus a margin set by your credit, the collateral and the term. It’s context only and never enters the math. Your rate is whatever your lender actually quotes.
What it costs after tax
The pre-tax monthly payment isn’t what a business actually spends. Both the borrowing and the purchase touch the return. But the size of that effect depends on your own numbers, so the panel above does one piece of arithmetic and stops there. Your deduction amount times your marginal rate gives the cash value of the deduction, and each route is shown net of it.
Nothing here is tax advice. Whether a deduction reaches a particular vehicle in a particular year is a question for your tax adviser, and the published amounts change, so read the current IRS text rather than a calculator.
Why the two routes can land differently
Buying and leasing get taxed through different doors. On the purchase side you’re depreciating an asset you own. On the lease side you’re deducting rent. Those aren’t the same mechanism, and one of them has a first-year election attached.
What the IRS says, with the source for each line
Interest on money borrowed for business activities is deductible as a business expense (Publication 334).
A taxpayer who leases a car for business use may deduct the part of each lease payment that is for business use, and a vehicle used for both business and personal purposes needs its expenses divided between the two (Publication 463). The same publication treats a vehicle used 50% or less for business separately.
Not every agreement labelled a lease is treated as one. A business has to work out whether its agreement is a lease or a conditional sales contract, because payments under a conditional sales contract aren’t deductible as rent, and different tax rules may apply (IRS Newsroom).
On the purchase side, a taxpayer can elect to expense part or all of the cost of section 179 property placed in service during the tax year and used predominantly, meaning more than 50%, in the trade or business. That total is limited to taxable income from the active conduct of a trade or business during the year, and there’s a separate maximum for sport utility vehicles. Motorcycles, pickup trucks and SUVs are named among the listed-property examples, and listed property used 50% or less in qualified business use is treated differently (Instructions for Form 4562).
Where property serves both business or investment purposes and personal purposes, depreciation may be deducted based only on the business or investment use (Publication 946).
Published dollar limits and vehicle and business-use rules govern first-year expensing under section 179. No figure on this page decides whether any of it reaches a given purchase.
If you only have one quote
Most buyers arrive holding one. Ask the dealer or lender for the purchase rate and the term in months. Then ask the lessor separately, in writing, for four things.
- The monthly lease payment
- The lease term in months
- The amount due at signing
- The end-of-term buyout
Those four are what make a lease comparable to a loan at all. A lessor who won’t put the buyout in writing has told you something useful.
Don’t expect the familiar disclosure box
Regulation M defines a consumer lease as a contract in the form of a bailment or lease for the use of personal property by a natural person, primarily for personal, family, or household purposes, for a period exceeding four months, and for a total contractual obligation not exceeding the applicable threshold. That definition doesn’t cover a lease for agricultural, business, or commercial purposes, or a lease made to an organization (12 CFR 1013.2). So ask for the four figures directly.
Questions businesses ask
Is a lease cheaper than a loan for a work truck
It depends entirely on the two quotes you were given, which is why this page won’t answer it for you. Enter both and read the cash to own for each route next to the monthly difference. A lower monthly payment with a buyout waiting is a different cash-flow shape, not automatically a lower total.
Does a longer term actually cost more
Compute once and read the term strip. Holding your amount and rate fixed, it recomputes the payment, the total interest and the total cost across your term and your term plus or minus 12 and 24 months, clamped to the 12 to 96 month range. The monthly figure falls as the term stretches. Total interest rises. Nothing there is asserted, it’s all calculated.
Why won’t the page show me a lease interest rate
Because it can’t know one. The lessor sets the money factor behind the payment, and without it the implicit rate can’t be recovered from the payment alone. We compare cash outlay instead and say so rather than quietly inventing a number.
What happens if I pay extra each month
Fill in the extra monthly payment box and the payoff panel appears. It amortizes the same principal at the same rate with your extra amount added to principal every month, then reports the payoff term, the months saved against the base schedule, and the interest saved. Leave it blank and the panel stays hidden.
Why is a used or older unit quoted differently
Lenders price the collateral as well as the borrower, so age, mileage and resale depth move the margin over the benchmark. This page can’t tell you what margin you’ll be offered and won’t guess at one. Enter the rate you were actually given.
Where these numbers come from
The math
Every payment, total, interest figure, schedule row and comparison on this page is recomputed in code from what you type, through the same shared amortization function the rest of the site uses. Nothing is typed by hand into the prose and nothing is estimated. The schedule reconciles to the summary, and the formula sits below so you can reproduce any row on paper.
The formula
Monthly payment = P × r / (1 − (1 + r)−n)
P is the amount financed, r is the annual rate divided by 12 and by 100, and n is the term in months. Interest in any month is the remaining balance times r, and principal is the payment minus that interest.
What we don’t supply
The only external number anywhere on this page is the U.S. Prime Rate, fetched from the Federal Reserve H.15 release and cross-checked before it’s shown. It’s labelled context, it isn’t your rate, and it never enters a calculation. No market APR, residual, money factor, fee, or tax rate comes from us. If a figure can’t be verified, we hold it rather than guess.
Who built it
I built the calculators on this site from the ground up, including the in-browser tools that print their own month-by-month schedule and reconcile every row back to the summary. I added the term comparison after watching how quietly a longer term costs in total interest. I’m Michal Lip.
What this page is and is not
Use it for any titled work vehicle a business buys. Van, box truck, flatbed, service body, dump truck, tractor unit, trailer. If all you want is the monthly payment on one vehicle, the commercial truck calculator and the semi truck calculator do that in a single column.
Asset Loan Calculator isn’t a lender, broker, or financial adviser, and doesn’t give a quote. Results are estimates from the numbers you enter. Eligibility is the lender’s or lessor’s decision. A lease and a loan are different contracts with different end-of-term obligations, and this page compares cash outlay on your own entered terms. It doesn’t model early termination, mileage or usage penalties, maintenance obligations, or insurance.