The food truck broke down and you cannot earn until it is fixed. What is realistic?

A restaurant with a dead oven still has a dining room and a fryer. A food truck with a dead transmission has nothing: the vehicle, the kitchen and the storefront are one machine, and when it stops so does every dollar of revenue. Most owners run one truck, so there is no second unit covering the shortfall.

That matters for funding because a funder reads your bank statements, and a truck that has been parked for five weeks shows five weeks of nothing. The single most useful thing you can do is apply in the first week, while the statements still show what the truck earns.

Drivetrain work on a step van or a converted box truck is labor and parts, and nobody finances it as an asset. A short-term working capital loan or a cash advance funds it, decided in about a day and paid in one to three business days.

Amounts run half to one and a half times one month's deposits. A truck doing $25,000 a month in a good season can expect offers from about $12,000. That covers most transmission jobs and a good share of engine work.

Card revenue helps here. Food trucks are card-heavy, and a true holdback — repayment as a percentage of card settlements rather than a fixed daily debit — means the payment falls to almost nothing on the days you are still parked. Ask for it by name.

A generator that dies is a different case. A commercial generator is an asset with a serial number and a resale market, and an equipment lender will finance a replacement over two to five years with the unit as security. Same for a new refrigeration unit or a griddle-and-fryer package.

It costs less than working capital and takes a day or two longer. If the failure is a component with a value, finance it as one.

If the truck breaks in October in a northern city, the honest comparison is between funding a repair now and parking it until March. The repayment on any advance is fixed against sales that may not exist in January.

Funders look at the last three to six months, so an application in spring, after a strong April and May, will produce a better offer than one in November against a fading season. If you can wait, the money is cheaper for waiting. If the truck is your whole income, you cannot, and weekly payments plus a true holdback is the shape to ask for.