The best advice one can give you about starting your own man and van service is: don’t do it. Now this is probably not going to dissuade somebody bent on making his life a whole lot more unpleasant but keep in mind that the whole thing would be a huge ordeal. The job is absolutely miserable, the clients, more often than not, ungrateful, the earnings are quite meager and the factors that you have no control over are plentiful and all of them usually conspire to ruin your day.
While it is true that a great deal of relocation companies have stated out as small such private businesses but today the competition is so fierce that even the most tenacious of people do not last much more than a couple of months. In general you are much better off joining an already existing company than starting your own service, but people will always try. This guide should be taken with a grain of salt, since nobody in the right mind would set out to start a man and van service.
- The man
There are two components needed to start a man and van service: a man (or woman, we do not discriminate here) and a van (who would have thought). The man (that is you if you haven’t guessed it by now) is required to possess a significant amount of skills relative to the task:
- The mentality
If you have no problems working in dreadful conditions, with horrid pay and coming home absolutely drained to even more work, then starting such a service is the right thing to do (although thinking about it you would be better off building a pyramid somewhere in the desert if this is the case).
- The talent
Now maybe “talent” is not the right word to describe it since with enough training anybody can do it. Pretty much all you would need is a drivers license and a strong back. If you cannot carry much weight around (I hope you were not expecting to be packing and moving flower pots all day) you should hit the gym for a bit prior to starting, or if in all likelihood your budget is a bit restricted, some bars might do the trick (not the chocolate kind)
- The people skills
“Hell is other people” – never has this been more true than when you are in this business. The clients are always right, but some are also – always unhappy. No matter how masterfully and carefully you pack their items, how fast you deliver them and how rapidly you manage to get them in an usable state you are not going to receive an praise from everybody.
- The Van
I sincerely doubt you have enough disposable income to buy a brand new van (if you did why would you bother working this?) so second hand will have to do. It doesn’t have to be white (we don’t want to be the White Van Man after all) .
When you are all set and ready to start working you might as well mark the date (and the time) of your first job because not long after you will be regretting ever starting this.