Buy the Saw, Hire the Lifter: A Blunt Take on Workshop Capex in 2026

There's a particular conversation that happens in stone workshops around this time of year, usually over a brew, usually after a job that overran because the saw was booked out. Someone says: we should buy our own. Everyone nods. Nobody does the maths.

So let's do the maths. Rates below are indicative 2026 UK trade figures — get local quotes, they vary wildly by region — but the shape of the argument holds wherever you are.

The rule I'd actually defend

Own the machine that sits on your critical path and runs more than about twelve days a month. Hire everything episodic. Hire anything whose specification is likely to change before it's paid off. And never buy a machine to solve a scheduling problem you could solve with a calendar and a phone call.

That's it. Everything else is detail.

What things cost, roughly

A competent 3-axis bridge saw is £18,000–£45,000 new depending on bed size and control. Entry-level imports land £9,000–£14,000 and depreciate like a dropped slab. Hire runs £150–£200 a day, £550–£700 a week, £1,400–£1,900 a month, plus delivery and collection at £120–£180 each way.

Wet polishers: £250–£600 to buy, £55–£85 a week to hire. Vacuum slab lifters: £1,200–£4,000 to buy, £90–£150 a week to hire. Gantry or portal cranes: £2,500–£6,000 to buy if you've got the headroom and the structural sign-off.

Finance on a £24,000 machine over five years at around 10% APR works out near £510 a month. On a £38,000 machine, roughly £800 a month. Add servicing, blades, water, power, insurance and floor space — budget 15–20% of the purchase price annually for a busy saw, rather less for an idle one.

The small masonry yard

Two masons, mostly walling stone, lintels, sills, the occasional granite worktop. Say four days a month on a saw.

Hiring: four days at £180 plus £300 of delivery and collection is roughly £1,000 a month, £12,000 a year. That's real money, and it's also money your accountant can offset immediately.

Buying: a £24,000 saw on five-year HP is £6,100 a year in finance, plus maybe £1,500 in servicing and consumables and a few hundred for the floor space and power. Call it £8,000 a year. On paper, ownership saves four grand.

Except: four days a month is a guess, and it's the guess that kills these decisions. If utilisation dips to two days, you're paying £8,000 to avoid £6,000 of hire. If a big contract lands and you need the saw every day for a month, hire rates look silly and you'll wish you'd bought. That asymmetry — the cost of being caught short versus the cost of carrying idle capital — is the entire decision.

My view on the yard: don't buy a bridge saw. Buy a decent rail saw and a good wet polisher, hire the bridge saw for the weeks you actually need it, and keep £24,000 of borrowing capacity in reserve for the year a contract actually justifies it.

The two-van fabricator

Different animal. Two installers, worktops and vanity tops, the saw running three to four days a week, plus weekend catch-up before big installs.

Hiring at that utilisation is grim: a month at £1,600, twelve months, £19,000 a year, and you're still queueing behind someone else's booking sheet. You can't cut at 7am on a Sunday because the hire depot is shut. You can't leave a template set up overnight.

Buying a £38,000 machine: £9,600 a year in finance, £2,500 running costs, £12,100 all in. That's £7,000 a year cheaper than hiring — and it comes with scheduling control that's worth more than the £7,000, because it's the difference between taking a rush job and turning one down.

Buy it. Buy it before you think you can afford it, if the utilisation is genuinely there. That's the one case where the enthusiastic voice in the workshop is right.

The lifting gear is a different question entirely

A vacuum lifter used twice a week, on jobs you can schedule? Hire it. Every time.

At £120 a day or £400 a week for a short campaign, hiring costs you maybe £2,500 a year at that frequency. Buying means capital tied up, storage, and — this is the bit people forget — LOLER inspection obligations on the lifting accessory and PUWER duties on the equipment. The hire company carries the maintenance burden, and if the pump seals go on a Tuesday morning they swap it, usually same day.

Same logic for telehandlers on delivery days, floor grinders on refurbs, and anything you'd describe as "handy to have." Handy to have is how workshops end up with £60,000 of equipment and no cash.

The middle road people forget

Two things worth flagging.

First, the second-hand market. Bridge saws depreciate hard and Italian machines hold up well mechanically. A five-year-old saw at half the new price, inspected properly, is frequently the smartest buy in the building. Check bed wear, spindle runout, and whether the control software is still supported — an orphaned controller is a scrap machine with a nice paint job.

Second, tax treatment. The Annual Investment Allowance sits at £1m, and limited companies can still use full expensing on qualifying plant. That's a genuine cash-flow lever, but it's not a reason to buy something you don't need — a 25% saving on a machine you use twice a month is still a loss.

Where I land

Own the saw if it's busy. Hire the lifter, always. Hire the grinder, the telehandler, and the specialist kit you'll use on four jobs a year. Buy second-hand when the machine is simple and the inspection is honest. And be brutally honest about your utilisation numbers, because every bad equipment decision in this trade starts with an optimistic estimate of how often you'll actually use the thing.

The machine doesn't care about your cash flow. Your accountant does. Somewhere between those two positions is the right answer, and it's almost never "buy everything" or "hire everything."