Apologies in advance if it's teaching you to suck eggs......
...but don't do what an apprentice did that the fork-truck manufacturer I onece worked for.
He was given the 'nice little job' of fitting out a new 'Service' van with racking etc. At the end of the day the racking was neatly fitted
- but there was a strong smell of petrol.
Lacking any advice / warnings etc he'd self-tapped the racking _through_ the petrol tank...
... so - only tip - be very sure where the pipes, tanks and wireing runs in your shiny new van
but I expect you knew that already ? no ??
Actually - on a serious note - it's worthwhile making 'everything' as flexible as possible - so you can move stuff round later. Who knows - prospective customers may even judge your competance on the basis of how well-organised the inside of your van is ! In any case - it does make things easier to find....
The other thing you've probably already considered is security. Blacked-out rear windows and someting hefty on the back door make it more likely that 'stuff' you put inside will stay 'inside'. I've seen vans with a sticker that says 'all tools removed overnight' - which, even if it's not true, may deter the casual tealeaf.
My advice to you is not to bother with sthose storage bins, they will break, collapse and fall off. Find a way to afford something from Tevo Vehicle raking and fit that. It aint cheap, but it is strong, looks professional, can be self fitted, and and the space gained to weight ratio is excellent.
If you can get into Costco, they have loads of bins, stacking ones, some with drawers and shelves, and also racking of all sorts. Most could be adapted to a van quite easily and the prices will leave a lot of change for other things.
=============================== Since you're building your own shelving consider using seed trays to create a custom-built storage unit. Standard trays are 38 x 24 x 6cm and a good garden centre will stock Stewart trays which are more like strong fibre than plastic. I've got two such units each 6' x 2' wide x 15" deep. Each one holds 44 trays and of course the trays can hold either tools or fittings. You would need to size according to van space and you might use a mix of full size / half size / quarter size trays.
You would need a door on any such unit for mobile use.
Depends how much you want to spend, how heavy the stuff is.
Get some lengths of 1.5" x 0.5" timber and some 6mm ply for the shelves (12mm or 18mm will be far to heavy). Make custom lengths of the timber to form two supports per section, a tight enough fit that they can't move, then reinforce top and bottom with L brackets. Add horizontal bits of the same timber for the shelves, but rather than horizontal make them lean back a few degrees to stop stuff rolling off the shelves
- then fit the 6mm for the shelves. Make the shelves in short bits one per bay and leave them loose so they can be easily lifted out to store out sized items temporarily.
Make the shelves height and width vary, so a variety of things can be stored, but obviously aim to keep the heavy stuff as low down as possible. Make a couple of shelves big enough to store a couple of those cheap plastic rigid storage boxes. Leave room for one of those small parts containers, with the clear slide out bins.
Add a couple of 12v fluorescent lights for those dark winter afternoons.
A rackless van is a better van ie all different commodities in a case for ease of the job.
When I worked for a certain estate agent the last bloke racked the van out I found that I was in and out of that van more times than a train in a station.
I ripped it all out and put everything in boxed containers and could take all nessecery items on the job rather than go to the van get the needed item, come back and start the job then finding I had to go back out the van for summat else.
To be honest - nobody was inclined to investigate much deeper
I seem to recall there was an 'interesting' phone conversation between the boss of the Service dept and the local garage who had supplied the Van..... company ended up buying a new van...
*know* they're good, a little more expensive than your 2X2 and bits of ply ideas, but I have the company Merc Sprinter Van (New shape 56 plate) fitted out and it's superb quality. The last system in the old van lasted (and is still being used) after 5 years and 185000 miles of the van being thrown around with full load at all times. If you wanna have a look at it you're welcome. Dartford based
I've always thought that those stickers might as well be replaced by ones which state "Lots of tools left in this van overnight" - I'm sure they must attract more toerags than they deter. But maybe that's just my cynical nature!
Agreed. I have no stickers but leave no tools in the van overnight. The window at the back of the van also allows the toerags to look in and see this is true.
The boxes I had where like the ones the council give you nowadays for newspapers ie stackable.
Marked with Plumbing,Electrical,Screws/Nails ect,ect and the other drawback of having racking is...at the end of the day after a hard days graft you're so knackered you just dump the stuff in the back of the van and don't put it back where it belonged in the racking,where as if the stuff is in crates there ain't that problem.
Clear boxes/lids make seeing what's in them and finding something much easier.
For smaller tools and stuff I cut the bottoms off 6, 4, and 2 pint plastic milk containers and put them in mini storage boxes, eg the ones made by 'Whitefurze'
Then to get at something small I also can easily pull out the container from it's box if need be. The containers fit quite well in the above boxes, one box will fit a '6' and three '2' containers IYSWIM.
Some framings/shelves to hold the boxes on the move and avoid the need for a lot of stacking would help, leaving the floor free for large tools and materials.
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