If you have been considering buying an ATV for a while, this article is for you. We will try to do our best at detailing all of the expenses you must be prepared to face should you be in the market for a new four-wheeler. Unfortunately, your budget might need a bit of tweaking as there are costs that you may not have given some thought to. Check out our suggestions below.
Rental or ownership
The shocking truth about renting an ATV instead of actually buying one is that you’ll only have to pay about twenty to thirty dollars per day if you decide to rent. Car rental is, by comparison, far more expensive, so it makes little to no sense to have any second thoughts. One piece of advice that you might want to bear in mind is to take a rented ATV on a test drive and see whether you actually like riding it.
Of course, you can do the same at one of your local dealerships, but it might pay off to have a whole day at your disposal to test the waters and see how the four-wheeler behaves out there.
A Polaris Sportsman 450 can usually be purchased for about eight thousand dollars, and consider that this isn’t the latest model we’re mentioning. On top of everything, there are other things you’re going to spend your pennies on, and we’ll detail them in the sections that follow.
Insurance, trail permits, and maintenance
Every vehicle you own needs to be insured, and for the sake of example, we’re going to tell you that you might pay at least two hundred and fifty dollars on yearly insurance. You’ll have to add around $150 for trail permits per year.
Besides, when it comes to maintenance, the sky’s the limit with regard to your expenses. You can’t know for sure when your ATV might suffer some sort of damage, so the right way of going about things is to consider that you’ll have to take about $200 out of your wallet for regular check-ups, oil changes, boot replacements, and anything else.
There are a lot of affordable choices when it comes to ATV tires, for instance, but you need to know for sure that you are spending your money wisely and that the cheap units you have selected can truly stand the test of time. Otherwise, you’ll end up replacing them too often.
Total costs per decade
Considering the price of the insurance, the costs of trail permits and the money you will inevitably spend on keeping your four-wheeler on par, all of these expenses might amount to the hefty sum of $15,000 per decade. If you want to sell your ATV after having used it for ten years, you might face the nasty surprise of realizing that you can only put it on the market for about $2,000 to $3,000, depending on its initial price.
Owning an ATV is a serious investment, but it doesn’t all boil down to the money. The fact is that, should you take your ATV out for rides ten weekends in a year, it makes more sense to own a four-wheeler than to rent one when you need it. Consider the frequency of use when you make your final call.