Conveyor System Financing

Conveyor system financing treats the conveyor as an installed project: the conveyor itself, controls, electrical work, installation and software, usually over 3–7 years at 6–22% APR. Gravity conveyor starts around $30 a foot, powered belt and roller conveyor runs roughly $60–$250 a foot installed, and sortation $800–$1,500 a foot. Equipment is often only 50–65% of the budget, so the key question for a lender is how much of the rest it will finance, and whether the landlord agrees if the building is leased.

Typical 2026 pricing. Equipment is often only 50–65% of a project budget; installation, electrical, controls and software make up the rest, and floor reinforcement or fire protection changes can add more.

Illustrative level monthly payments on the amount financed. Rates depend on credit, time in business, the project and the lender.

A conveyor system is designed for your building, your products and your flow, then installed and integrated with scanners, scales, printers and the warehouse management system. That makes it less like buying a forklift and more like a construction project. Lenders who finance automation are used to this: they will finance the equipment, and a share of the soft costs, against the integrator’s contract, often in stages as the work progresses.

Because installation, electrical, controls and software can be a third to half of the budget, the share a lender will include is a central term. Many will finance most or all of it when the integrator is established and the system is standard; others cap soft costs at a percentage of the total. Ask the integrator for a quote that separates equipment, controls, installation and software, and ask the lender at the start how it treats each line. It avoids a funding gap at the end of the project.

Conveyors are bolted to the floor and wired into the building. If you lease the building, the lender will usually ask the landlord to sign a waiver confirming the system remains your equipment, not a fixture that belongs to the property, and that the lender can remove it if needed. Start that conversation early; landlord waivers are one of the most common causes of delay in automation financing. The remaining term of your lease matters too: a lender will be cautious about a seven-year financing on a building lease with two years left.

Larger systems are paid in milestones: a deposit at order, payments as equipment ships, and a final payment at commissioning. Many lenders can fund against those milestones and start the regular payment once the system is running, sometimes with interest-only payments during installation. Build that schedule into the integrator contract so the lender’s funding steps match the integrator’s invoices.

The payback on conveyors comes from labor, throughput and accuracy: fewer people walking product, more orders per hour, fewer mis-shipments, and the ability to handle peak season without doubling temporary staff. A one-page summary of those numbers helps any lender, and for larger projects it is expected. If the conveyor feeds a palletizer or a robotic packing cell, see industrial robot financing; for the trucks that move pallets to the line, forklift financing.

Used conveyor is widely available from facility closures and upgrades and can cost a fraction of new. It can be financed, especially when a reputable integrator is relocating and reinstalling it with new controls. Lenders will value the used equipment conservatively, so the new parts of the project (controls, installation, integration) often make up most of what is financed.

Conveyor systems are generally depreciable equipment, and a financed system can qualify for Section 179 like a cash purchase, up to $2,560,000 for tax years beginning in 2026, when placed in service by December 31. Some building-related work may be treated differently, so confirm the split with your CPA. Inventory and peak-season staffing are better funded with working capital; for plant-wide strategy, see manufacturing equipment financing, or apply once at equipment financing.