Telehandler Financing for General Contractors

General contracting is a coordination problem. You have multiple subcontractors working the same site in overlapping sequences, and material staging is the constant variable that either speeds them up or clogs them. A telehandler with forks handles palletized loads of block, lumber, bagged materials, and steel. Swap to a bucket and it is moving dirt or aggregate. Swap to a work platform and your crew is doing elevated work without calling in a separate lift.

Reach matters here. A compact machine with 42 feet of lift height gets lumber to the third floor of a wood-frame build. A 10,000-pound capacity unit with 55 feet of reach handles structural steel panels and rooftop mechanical equipment on mid-rise commercial jobs. The GC running a 6,000-pound fixed-frame on a spec home subdivision has a different machine than the GC placing mechanical units on a distribution center roof, but the financing structure looks similar because the machines sit in the same price band.

Used machines in the 2,000-to-5,000-hour range from brands like SkyTrak, JLG, and Manitou are common GC buys. They are capable machines at prices below new iron, and we fund them off three months of bank statements the same way we fund a new unit off the dealer floor.

The typical GC buyer in this program is a contractor running two to ten active projects at a time, generating enough revenue that rental costs on a telehandler have become a line item worth owning. The math is usually simple: if you are renting a machine more than about six months out of the year, you are probably close to the monthly payment on ownership, and you own the asset at the end of the term.

We also fund GCs who are scaling up to take on a larger class of project and need their own iron to remain competitive on bids. A contractor quoting a commercial project who has to factor in daily rental for material handling is at a disadvantage against a competitor who owns the machine. That equipment difference shows up on the bid sheet.

Contractors who have had a rough credit year, a slow-pay client that caused a temporary cash crunch, or a seasonal revenue pattern that confused a conventional bank are exactly the kind of borrowers we work with. We look at bank statements and the equipment, not just the score. challenged credit equipment financing is a real product here, not a footnote.

General contractors do not have time to wait six weeks for a credit committee. You found the machine, you need it on the job, and you need to know today whether the paper is going to close. We work on a one-to-two-week timeline from application to funded. For deals under $400,000, the application is one page and three months of bank statements. No tax returns, no audited financials, no drawn-out process.

Larger deals or situations with complicated credit can take a little longer, but we are not a bank with a committee that meets monthly. We structure deals to get through, not to find reasons to decline. If the equipment is real and the cash flow is there in the statements, we close it. You can also finance a full attachment package alongside the machine as a single deal, so the forks, bucket, and work platform all come out of one approval.

A lot of GCs have iron on the yard that is paid off or nearly so. That equity sits idle while you are trying to fund the next job's mobilization or cover payroll between draws. A sale-leaseback converts that equity into cash in the account, usually in the same one-to-two-week window. You continue using the machine; we hold the title; you get the working capital.

Refinancing a machine you still owe on also works if there is equity above the payoff and you need cash out for operations. We can structure a cash-out refinance that pays off the existing note and puts additional funds in your hands. General contractors are often in a capital-intensive position between project draws, and the iron on the yard is the fastest source of liquidity available.