Starting a man and van business in the UK

You’re on a forecourt and the bloke’s steering you at the shiny one with the finance on it. Walk past. That payment goes out in January whether the phone rings or not.

Three sizes. A short-wheelbase does single sofas, IKEA runs and a bedsit. A long-wheelbase is the workhorse: a 1-bed in one load on a good day, a 2-bed usually in two runs. A Luton takes on a house move (a 2-bed in one go on a good day, anything bigger in two runs), and it’s a beast to park in Brixton.

On an ordinary car licence you can generally drive a van rated up to 3.5 tonnes, and on its own, working in this country, a van under that needs no operator’s licence, but that 3.5 is the plate: the most the van’s allowed to weigh loaded, not what it weighs empty. It’s usually on a sticker in the door shut. Hitch a trailer and the van and the trailer get added together, which puts you over. Check yours.

Your mate’s cousin wants a sofa shifting on Saturday, cash, mate’s rates. Lovely, right up until you catch a doorframe and find your cover was never meant for hauling somebody else’s furniture for money.

Three covers a broker will talk you through: hire and reward on the van, goods in transit for their belongings while they’re in your care, and public liability for the wall you take a chunk out of with a wardrobe corner. Take somebody on and employers’ liability isn’t a choice, it’s the law, with a fine for every day you’re without it. Whether a self-employed mate counts turns on how he’s actually taken on, so tell the broker exactly what the arrangement is. The insurance answer is the list to walk in with.

Sole trader is quick to register. You tell HMRC you’re self-employed, free, online, and there’s a deadline after your first tax year ends, so check it on GOV.UK; a limited company is more filing and a different tax picture. Ask an accountant which suits you. Keep every receipt, diesel included. That’s what the tax return is built from.

First job, no blankets. You wrap a chest of drawers in a duvet from the back of the van while the customer stands there watching. That’s your first review, right there.

A dozen proper removal blankets, ratchet straps, a sack truck with stair glides, a tape measure, a tool roll for beds and wardrobes, and a torch. The last box always comes out in the dark. Roughly £300 to £600 for the lot. Buy the blankets, straps and sack truck new. They take the beating. The rest you can pick up second-hand.

Measure your loadspace (floor length, door height) and write it on a card for the cab, before you promise a wardrobe will go in.

Nobody puts a broom and a bin bag on the list. Sweeping the empty room out takes two minutes and gets mentioned in reviews.

Somebody messages ‘how much to move a 1-bed?’ on your second day. You panic, say a number off the top of your head, and regret it for nine hours.

Start with your own sum. What a day costs you (diesel, insurance divided down, the van, the phone, a mate if you use one) is your floor. A worked week with the costs taken off does the numbers.

Then check yourself against the area. London is not Lincolnshire. Round the country an hourly rate for you and the van lands in the £30 to £60 bracket, with a two-hour minimum; a house move usually gets one price for the whole job, stairs and waiting time in it. A local 1-bed commonly lands somewhere around £200 to £300, a 2-bed with two of you around £350 to £500. Ring three firms near you as a customer.

Cheapest is the easiest thing in this trade to be, and the hardest to stop being.

Not from a website you haven’t built. The first ten are sat in your phone already: mates, cousins, the neighbour who’s been meaning to clear his garage since March. Twenty messages, one at a time, shake more loose than anything else this week.

After that it’s the free Google listing. Get verified and you’ve a shot at the map of local firms Google puts near the top when somebody in Bromley searches on a Sunday night. Then a Facebook page set up like a business, with a real price in the first post, and your name on both sides of the van: roughly £200 to £400 fitted, usually before VAT.

The message to send, word for word, and the other ways to bring work in are in how to get man and van work without paying for leads. Do the messages, the listing and the Facebook page this week. The messages land in days, the listing and the vinyl pay back months later.

The first ten jobs barely pay. One’s a mate’s rate for somebody’s sister, another books two hours and keeps you five. That’s the tax on having no reviews. Do them properly anyway.

And it comes in lumps: three jobs on Saturday, then a Tuesday where nothing happens and you’re refreshing your phone in the van. What does the damage is dropping your price to fill the quiet one. Do a 1-bed cheap once and you’ll be asked to do the next for the same.

Honest bit: count what you cleared, not what you took. The notes in your hand feel great until the diesel, the parking and the whole day come off it. Write down every job, what it paid and what it cost.

Quoting off a phone call is the big one. Not much stuff, she says, then there’s a chest freezer in the garage and a piano nobody mentioned. Price agreed, so you eat it. Ask room by room, first.

No deposit is next. You turn two jobs down to keep the Saturday free, then the booking cancels on the Friday night. Take something up front on anything bigger than a sofa, small enough not to scare anybody off, big enough that they turn up. Roughly £30 to £50, or a slice of the price. Bank transfer does it to start with, sort code and account number under the confirmation message, and you mark the job in when it lands.

Then mate’s-rate jobs before your cover is live. One dropped telly and you’re paying for it yourself, on a job you did as a favour. That’s the one that can finish you.

And building the week on bought leads. £15 to £30 an enquiry, the same one going to four or five vans, and the day you stop paying, the phone stops. You’re renting customers, and the rent goes up.

House moves pile up on Fridays, at the end of the month and on Saturdays. Completions usually go through on a Friday, the last few days of the month are end-of-tenancy, and Saturdays are families with a deadline. Guard those slots: don’t fill a Saturday with a single-sofa run booked three weeks early.

Midweek keeps the lights on: clearances, a single-item delivery, a small office bit, a run to storage. Before the first load of somebody else’s rubbish goes to the tip, get registered as a waste carrier. It’s a form and a fee, it isn’t same-day, and carrying without it is an offence. Check what applies where you are before you take the booking.

Then two habits. A quoting slot (half an hour in the morning, half an hour when you’re back) so nothing gets answered four hours late. And twenty minutes on a Sunday: next week written down, deposits chased, review links sent.

An enquiry lands at ten past two and you’re under a wardrobe on a second floor in Penge. By half four you’re back in the cab, and she’s had two other prices.

That’s what Kwotly is for. The enquiry lands on a quote page of your own, priced up from the customer’s list or photos at your rates before you’ve opened it. Between jobs you look it over, change what you don’t like and press send: minutes instead of an evening, your name on the page.

Small confession: it gets the list right most of the time, not every time. When it misses something (that chest freezer in the garage again), you fix the list in two taps. You’re the one pressing send, always. The free plan is ten quotes a month, no card, then £39 a month. What removals software does and doesn’t do covers the rest.