How to Rent or Lease a Treadmill Desk

One of the biggest hurdles to widespread treadmill desk adoption in the workplace is that most large enterprises have never had one before and may be reluctant to purchase an entire fleet for their employees, sight unseen. Even when they decide they’re ready to make the jump to a treadmill desk workstation, they often run into difficulty choosing the right one for their needs. We always recommend trying out a treadmill desk yourself before you commit to one, but there are too few brick-and-mortar locations that exhibit an array of full treadmill desks, much less allow anyone to walk in off the street and use them.

Now, a new type of service is making it much easier for large enterprises to determine whether treadmill desks are a good fit for them, usually as part of a workplace wellness program, at fairly low costs. Treadmill desk rental and leasing programs give offices the opportunity to trial a set of treadmill desks before committing to an entire fleet of them for their more sedentary office workers. These programs allow employers and employees to experience treadmill desks in their own office and learn the logistics of incorporating these workstations into their organization firsthand: where they should go, how to set them up with ergonomic adjustability for all users, how to schedule their use—practical challenges that people don’t often think about when they’re browsing through treadmill desks online or in store. Here are a couple of important features to consider when evaluating how well a rental or leasing program fits into your own office’s budget and timetable.

Time Period

Before signing up, it’s important to ask yourself how long you intend to use the treadmill desk in your facilities. In general, rental programs are designed for shorter terms than treadmill desk leases. This kind of program poses less risk compared to buying or leasing, and therefore better lends itself to experimentation with office fit. You can try out a treadmill desk for a few months and return it if it isn’t a good fit for your organization. These programs are often a very cost-efficient way of trialing treadmill desks in the short term, but long term the monthly costs can add up. For this reason we recommend rental programs strictly as a trialing tool and not as a replacement to buying treadmill desks.

Organizations that are very sure they want to offer treadmill desks to their employees but don’t have room in their immediate budget for the full, up-front cost should look into lease financing.

Option to Buy

It is not uncommon for rental and leasing programs to include an option to buy the equipment during or at the end of the rental or lease period. If the customer likes their treadmill desk and wants to give it a permanent home in their office, this makes it easy and cost-effective for them to purchase their equipment. Oftentimes a portion of the rental payments is applied towards the final purchase price of the equipment, so customers end up paying very little for the opportunity to “try before buying” and don’t have to go through the hassle of shipping and installation again. We therefore always recommend this feature when looking for a rental or leasing program.

Other Considerations

Beyond the length of the trial period and the details of buying the rented equipment at the end or during the trial, here are a few other factors to consider when looking for a trial program. Before signing up, consider the following:

• Should you decide to purchase your rented treadmill desk, do any of your previous rental payments apply towards the purchase price, or are you required to pay full price again?
• Already have a specific model in mind? Talk directly to the manufacturer and see if they offer any rental programs you can take advantage of.
• For a trial run, you don’t need to worry about getting a treadmill desk for everyone in the office. A single treadmill desk is enough for four or five employees to share throughout the day.
• The desk and the treadmill are just the starting point for putting together an ergonomic treadmill desk station. Find out what kinds of accessories—monitor arms, keyboard trays, power options, cable management kits, etc.—are offered with each rental. There’s little point in renting a workstation that’ll be ergonomically deficient and leave employees with a poor user experience.
• How is shipping and delivery handled? Do you have to assemble the desk yourself, or does it arrive pre-assembled? These delivery features can save your facilities department from the hassle of assembling a desk, and get your teams more productive from the get-go.

Available Programs

As more and more offices make treadmill desks a centerpiece of their office wellness program, we expect the demand for treadmill desk rental and leasing programs to increase. For now, however, these types of programs are few and far between. We found two different services on the market today, provided by Leaseville and iMovR.

Leaseville, as the name suggests, offers a lease-to-own program for a variety of products. Unfortunately, the only treadmill desk they offer is a LifeSpan TR1200-DT5 which is an ergonomic sham due to the “computer hunch” it encourages by placing so much distance between the user and their keyboard, the inability to mount an adjustable keyboard tray, and its severely limited ability to adjust in height (requires three people to do it each time). See our full review for more details about why we don’t recommend this model. Since the LifeSpan TR1200-DT5 is the only desk offered by Leaseville, we do not recommend this program for the best employee experience.

iMovR’s program offers several treadmill desk models to rent. These workstations all come with their state-of-the-art ThermoTread GT office treadmill, as well as all the necessary accoutrements to make a truly ergonomic workstation. While only three models are listed as “most popular configurations,” these desks are available in a huge variety of colors, and iMovR does offer other desk sizes and several other models in addition to the ones available for rent.

With iMovR’s program there’s a minimum rental period of three months, after which a monthly fee is issued for however long the customer wants to rent – starting at $99 a month. Customers can buy the workstation at any time, with all shipping, installation, prepaid termination fee, and 80% of their previous monthly payments all applying towards the final purchase price. If purchased within ninety days of receiving the equipment a company would end up paying less than $100 for the privilege of trialing before buying.

In addition to the minimum rental period, iMovR requires a minimum rental of two units per building address. For these reasons, this program is not suitable for home offices or small businesses, but is a great fit for larger corporate, government and education campuses. For more details, see their rental page.

We will update this page with more treadmill desk trialing programs as we find them, so subscribe to our free newsletter to stay on top of the latest in office fitness!