Vocational truck financing

A vocational truck is a chassis with a body built for one job: a dump bed, a vacuum tank, a bucket boom, a roll-off hoist. The chassis comes from a truck dealer and the body from an upfitter, which is why financing one is different from financing a pickup. iFinancial Group finances the whole truck, chassis and body, new or used, on a one-page application. No tax returns and no audited financial statements to apply, no minimum and up to $1,000,000.

Who you're dealing with

iFinancial Group has funded equipment since 1997, roughly $600 million of it, in all 50 states. We're a direct lender, not a broker, so the file is underwritten in house and not shopped around. Our customers have ranged from independent manufacturers to global technology companies. We've barely advertised in almost three decades. The business came from repeat customers, referrals, and vendors sending us their customers.

Two invoices, one truck

Most vocational trucks arrive as two purchases. The cab and chassis come from a truck dealer. The body, the tank, the hoist or the boom comes from a body builder, who mounts it and ships the finished truck. Two invoices, sometimes two states. We finance the two as one piece of equipment, on one approval, with one payment. The body is part of the truck, not an add-on, so it's financed as the equipment itself and not as a soft cost.

Soft costs are the things around the truck: freight from the body builder, dealer setup, decals and lettering, operator training. Those can ride on the same deal, on many deals up to 30% of the total, so a truck that costs $180,000 to put on the road isn't a $160,000 loan and a $20,000 cash bill.

The 26,001 pound line

Every truck carries a GVWR, the gross vehicle weight rating, which is the loaded weight it's built to carry. At 26,001 pounds and above the driver needs a commercial driver's license. Below it, anyone with a regular license can drive the truck. That one number shapes a lot of vocational purchases. A body builder will often spec a truck to stay under the line so the owner can put any employee behind the wheel, and a non-CDL truck has a bigger pool of buyers when it's sold, which is part of why it holds its value.

Whether the truck is above or below the line doesn't change how it's financed here. It changes who you can hire to run it, and that's worth deciding before you order the chassis, not after.

Titles, liens and leases

A truck is a titled vehicle, so the financing works a little differently from a machine that sits in a shop. The lender is listed as the lienholder on the title and as the loss payee on the insurance, and the lien comes off when the last payment is made. There's no claim on the rest of the business, the way a blanket lien would work. The truck secures the truck.

Titled vehicles can also be written as a TRAC lease, a lease built for trucks where the value at the end of the term is set up front. Some operators prefer it for the way it's treated on their books. Which way to write a given truck is a conversation on the call and with your tax advisor, not a decision the application forces.

Build times and deposits

New vocational trucks are usually built to order. The chassis has to be allocated, the body builder has a queue, and the finished truck can be weeks or months out. That's why an approval here holds up to 60 days, and why we can often pay the body builder at order rather than only at delivery, so the deposit the builder wants is part of the financing instead of coming out of your cash. How much is prefunded at order depends on the builder's terms and the file.

If the truck is sitting on a dealer's lot ready to go, none of that applies, and a deal can fund inside a week once the terms are signed.

New, used, auction

Used vocational trucks trade through dealers, through auctions and between private parties, and we finance all three. On a used truck the hours on the body matter as much as the miles on the chassis: a vacuum blower, a hoist or a boom has its own service life. The invoice, the title and proof of what was paid are what the review usually works from.

Work trucks over 6,000 pounds GVWR generally qualify for the Section 179 deduction in the year they're placed in service, which is why so many vocational trucks get ordered in the fall. Confirm the treatment of your own purchase with your tax advisor.

Trucks covered

How it works with iFinancial Group

It's the same one-page application whether the equipment is small or the deal runs to $1,000,000: no tax returns and no audited financial statements to apply, no minimum and up to $1,000,000. Decisions typically come back within 24 hours, and an approval holds up to 60 days. New and used equipment, terms up to 84 months, and soft costs up to 30% so freight, setup and training can go in the same deal. Payment structures beyond level payments are there when the equipment earns unevenly. We've been doing this since 1997, in all 50 states.