CAT vs. John Deere: Comparing Dealer Rental-Purchase Option Programs Before You Commit to an Excavator

A Rental Purchase Option, usually shortened to RPO, is a simple idea with a lot of fine print hiding underneath it: you rent a machine for a set period, and some percentage of what you've already paid in rent gets credited toward buying it outright if you decide to keep it. Both CAT and John Deere dealers offer their own version of this. Neither manufacturer runs it as a single, nationally standardized factory program — it's dealer-administered on both sides — but how much each dealer network actually publishes about the mechanics up front is where the real difference between the two brands shows up.

CAT's RPO: Real, But Thin on Public Detail

Quinn Company, an authorized CAT dealer covering parts of California, Nevada, and Hawaii, advertises a Rental Purchase Option letting a customer "apply a percentage of your rental payment toward the purchase" of a small excavator. That's the extent of what's published on the dealer's own site. It doesn't state the percentage, the required rental duration, or exactly when a customer can exercise the purchase option. Other CAT dealers, including Milton CAT in the Northeast, have run their own RPO promotions on similar terms, which confirms this is a real, recurring offer across the CAT dealer network — but the specifics are consistently a conversation you have with your sales representative, not a number published on a web page.

John Deere's RPO, Through RDO Equipment: More Structure, More Disclosure

RDO Equipment Co., one of the largest John Deere construction dealers in North America, publishes a genuinely detailed RPO guide. The rental period typically runs three to six months. The rent-to-apply percentage still gets negotiated at setup — RDO doesn't publish one universal number either — but the dealer provides a concrete payment schedule showing exactly how much of what you've paid applies at roughly the three-month and six-month marks, rather than leaving the whole arrangement as a verbal conversation. RDO also continues handling monitoring, scheduled maintenance, and warranty repairs during the rental period, and the guide states plainly that the remaining balance, once you exercise the purchase option, gets financed through John Deere Financial — the brand's true captive lender.

What RDO's Guide Spells Out That Quinn's Page Doesn't

RDO's own guide is also candid about the qualification hurdles: a credit application, proof of insurance, and either an approved RDO credit line or a preliminary notice tied to the project the machine will work on. It doesn't dodge the open question either — the guide doesn't spell out what happens to rent you've already paid if you decide not to exercise the purchase option at the end of the term, which is worth asking your dealer directly before you sign anything. That's a level of up-front candor, gaps included, that simply isn't matched anywhere in CAT's publicly available RPO materials, which stop at the one-sentence pitch.

Why This Isn't Just a Paperwork Difference

An RPO genuinely earns its place for a specific kind of buyer: a grading or excavation contractor who's fairly sure they'll need a small excavator long-term but wants to run it on a real job first, confirm it's the right size class, and avoid committing full purchase financing before they've actually tested the machine against their own ground conditions. A demolition sub bidding a project with an uncertain timeline, or a landscape contractor scaling up from attachment work to owning their first excavator, both fit this pattern well. The gap in disclosure matters here specifically because an RPO commits real money for months before any purchase decision is final — knowing the payment schedule and the qualification bar up front, the way RDO's guide lays out, genuinely changes how confidently you can commit to the rental period in the first place.

Where Straight Financing Beats an RPO Entirely

An RPO makes sense when you're genuinely still deciding. It stops making sense the moment you already know you need the machine and you're just using the rental period as an expensive way to delay a financing conversation you could have today. Rental rates are priced to make the rental company money regardless of which way you decide, and months of rent-to-apply credit is rarely as generous as the equity you'd build from day one on a properly structured loan. If you already know the excavator size and brand you need, going straight to financing — rather than renting your way toward a decision you've effectively already made — almost always comes out ahead on total cost.

BFC Equipment Loans finances excavators from both CAT and John Deere, and every other approved brand, for startups and established contractors nationwide, any credit profile. Deposit structures scale to the deal rather than a fixed figure quoted in advance, and we'll walk through whether an RPO or straight financing actually fits your situation better in your application conversation.

Related Reading

If you're already leaning toward financing instead of renting your way to a decision, see how trade-in equity rolls into financing when upgrading from a CAT 906 to a CAT 950 GC, and browse our full excavator financing options for either brand.

Bottom Line

Both CAT and John Deere dealers offer a real path to rent your way toward ownership. John Deere's version, through RDO Equipment, is simply more transparent about the mechanics up front. CAT's version is just as real but requires a direct conversation with your dealer to get the same clarity. Either way, an RPO is a tool for genuine indecision — once you know what you need, straight financing almost always wins on total cost.

Ready to Finance Your Next Excavator?

BFC Equipment Loans finances CAT, John Deere, and every other approved brand's excavators nationwide, any credit profile. Visit our home page, start your financing application, browse our equipment for sale listings, or subscribe to our newsletter for more coverage like this.