He was asking about this because he was already turned down by another equipment financing company due to the vehicle’s age. He wanted to finance a very good condition 2018 work truck for five years, and was told it was too old, which surprised him. Was 2018 really THAT long ago?

I told him I had bad news and good news. The bad news is almost every equipment financing company out there uses the exact same formula – they want the loan term and the vehicles’ age (in model year) to be equal to or less than seven years.

So right now, in the spring of 2023, most lenders will only let you finance a 2020 model or later for five years. The 2018 model mentioned could only get a three-year loan from another lender (note – if the math seems off by one, it’s not – we’re simply not counting the current year twice).

Now here’s the good news – Crest Capital is one of the only business lenders that will consider financing used vehicles without a hard age cap. Instead, we’ll look at each used vehicle financing deal on its own merits, without a pre-defined age formula. In the case of the emailer, his vehicle passed our internal criteria, and we felt comfortable financing it for five years, which we did. 

By their very nature, business vehicles usually age pretty fast, so the “seven years” formula is not really out of bounds. But as a small business lender, we feel it’s a better service to our customers to look at a used vehicle financing deal with a little more personal touch. Many times, a used vehicle three / four / five years old is still a very viable vehicle with many years of useful life left, and an excellent value for the buyer. And if that’s the case, we’re one of the only equipment financing companies that will consider financing it for five years.    

After all, like all of us getting older say, “age is just a number”.