Tips for replacing a small work van that nobody talks about

I'm on the van side of this fence after five years with a used Transit 150 for my handyman work, and I'd back up the part about laying everything out first. I did the same exercise with a tarp in the driveway one Saturday and found three boxes of misc fittings I hadn't touched since I bought them. Sold a bunch of it at a yard sale and freed up a whole shelf tier.

Where I differ is on the tall stuff. Even a couple residential jobs a week means my 24 foot extension ladder lives in the van, plus the 6 foot step ladder and the folding sawhorses. I looked hard at trucks with a rack but clamping and unclamping that extension ladder twice a day in the rain was enough to kill the idea for me. The rear door height alone kept me in a van.

One thing I'd add on the money side is that used shelving shows up cheap if you watch auctions and guys retiring out of the trade. I paid a fraction of new for my racking, just had to re-bolt it to fit my floor. And yes, test drive it loaded. I borrowed a friend's van with my gear in it for a weekend before buying and it rode completly different than the empty dealer loaner.

The loaded test drive bit can't be overstated. I skipped that years ago and bought a cargo van that felt fine empty, then loaded it up and it wallowed all over the highway like a boat. Ended up throwing heavier springs in the rear just to make it tolerable. Now I won't even look at a work rig til I've got a couple hundred pounds of junk in the back of it for a spin.

One thing I learned running a service rig for 25 years: keep the old van a while after the new one shows up. I sold my first one the week the replacement arrived and kicked myself when the new rig sat in the dealer shop for two weeks waiting on a part. Had no wheels to run parts runs with. Now I let the old one sit in the driveway a season as a backup before it goes. Also, you don't have to buy fancy shelving day one. We used to build our own out of plywood and 2x4s, and honestly half of it worked better than the prefab stuff. Live with the rig a month first, then spend the money where your gear actualy tells you it needs to go.

Appliance repair guy here, about 9 service calls a day, and the thing that sold me on the van layout was the side door. You end up parked on the street half the time and the sliding door lets me grab parts or the dolly without dragging stuff past traffic. With a truck bed you're always walking around to the tailgate, which sounds minor until you do it 40 times a day.

Also worth figuring your insurance and registration into the comparison early. When I priced both out the commercial policy on the truck came in higher than I expected, enough to change which one made sense monthly.