How to start a man with a van business in the UK: insurance, licences and real rates

Man with a van is one of the highest-earning entry points in local work, and one of the easiest to get legally wrong. Two of the four things below are legal requirements that a large number of operators simply do not have, and both are checked when something goes wrong.

The vehicle

A medium or long-wheelbase panel van is the standard tool: a Transit, Transit Custom, Vivaro, Sprinter or Crafter. What matters is load length, load height, side door access and whether you can get a wardrobe in without turning it upright.

• Used, 80,000 to 130,000 miles, four to eight years old: roughly £6,000 to £14,000 depending on model and size.
• Cheaper than that usually means a high-mileage van that will cost you the difference in downtime, and downtime is worse than depreciation when you have three jobs booked.
• Lease or hire purchase spreads the cost but ties you to fixed monthly payments before you know your volume. If you go this way, do it after two months of proving demand, not before.

Add the things that make the job faster: straps, blankets, a sack truck, a furniture dolly, a trolley, and a decent ramp. That is £200 to £400 and it pays for itself within a month in saved time and avoided damage.

If you plan to work in London, price the ULEZ into every vehicle you look at. A non-compliant van costs £12.50 a day inside the zone, which is roughly £3,000 a year for a full-time operator, and the congestion charge is a separate daily cost on top for central jobs, check the current daily rate before you quote, because it has changed.

Insurance: the part that catches people out

Hire and reward. A standard van policy covers social, domestic, pleasure and commuting, and often your own tools and materials for your own business. It does not cover carrying other people's goods for payment. The moment someone pays you to move their sofa, you need hire and reward cover, usually a courier or haulage policy depending on distance and whether you carry multiple customers' goods at once. Without it, a claim is refused and driving without valid cover is an offence.

Goods in transit. Covers the customer's property while it is in your van. Not legally required, but you are moving several thousand pounds of someone's belongings and one accident without it will end the business. Typical cover levels are £10,000 to £25,000. Many customers, and effectively all commercial ones, will ask for it.

Public liability. Covers injury and damage caused by your work outside the vehicle, a wardrobe through a stairwell wall, a dropped box on a foot. Take £2m if you want office moves or agent work.

Budget realistically for insurance. Hire and reward cover for a van is materially more expensive than a private policy, and quotes vary hugely by postcode, age and claims history. Get three quotes before you buy the van, not after, because the answer sometimes changes which van you buy.

The waste carrier licence, which almost everyone misses

This is the one that generates fines and the one most operators do not know about.

If you carry someone else's waste as part of your business, you must be registered as an upper-tier waste carrier with the Environment Agency, or SEPA in Scotland, NRW in Wales, or NIEA in Northern Ireland. Registration is around £190 and lasts three years.

For a man with a van, that includes almost anything you would think of as a favour:

• Taking the old sofa to the tip after delivering the new one
• Removing packaging and pallets after a delivery
• Clearing a flat or garage
• Taking green waste away after a garden job

Carrying waste without registering is an offence and can lead to an unlimited fine, and fly-tipping brings vehicle seizure and worse. Your customer is also exposed: under the householder duty of care they are responsible for checking that whoever takes their waste is authorised, and they can be fined if it is dumped. That means good customers will ask for your registration number, and being able to give it wins work. Full detail in the waste carrier licence guide.

Do you need an operator licence?

For most man-with-a-van work in Great Britain, no. A goods vehicle operator licence is required for vehicles over 3.5 tonnes gross plated weight used to carry goods for hire and reward, and nearly every panel van used for this work is at or under 3.5 tonnes. If you go up to a 7.5-tonne lorry, that changes, and Driver CPC comes into it too.

There is a separate rule for vans between 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes doing international journeys, which needs a light goods vehicle standard international operator licence. Purely domestic UK work is not caught by it. Check the current position on gov.uk before you plan anything cross-Channel.

There is no licence needed to call yourself a removals company. Trade association membership is optional and mainly a marketing signal.

Price by the job, not by the hour

Hourly pricing means working faster earns you less, and it leaves the final figure open on the day. Price the job, from four inputs.

1. Access at both ends. Ground floor with parking outside is a different job from a fourth-floor flat with no lift and a permit needed. This is the single biggest variable and the one customers forget to mention.
2. Volume, in van loads, not in item counts. Ask for photographs of every room, always.
3. Miles, and empty miles. The return leg is unpaid and real.
4. People. Two people is not double the price of one, but it is never the same price either.

Typical UK ranges, for the whole job:

Job	Typical price
Single item collection and delivery, local	£40, £90
Small flat move, one van load, ground floor	£150, £280
Two-bed flat move, two people, stairs	£350, £600
Three-bed house move, two to three people	£600, £1,200
House or garage clearance, per van load, with disposal	£150, £350 plus tip fees

Always quote a fixed price with a stated waiting-time rate after the first thirty minutes, and put in writing what is not included: dismantling, packing materials, disposal, parking permits, congestion or ULEZ charges.

What a realistic week looks like

A busy solo operator in a city might run four to eight jobs a week, mixing one or two full moves with several small collections and deliveries. At an average of £180 a job, that is £700 to £1,400 a week gross.

Out of that come real costs. Fuel is the obvious one. Less obvious, and much larger over a year: insurance, tyres, servicing, MOT, breakdown cover, tip fees, parking and permits, and the depreciation on the van itself. HMRC's approved mileage rate of 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles is a reasonable benchmark for what running a vehicle really costs, and it is why a job forty miles away at the same price as one five miles away is not the same job.

A sensible planning assumption is that between a quarter and a third of your gross goes on the vehicle over a full year, before tax. Anyone quoting you a headline weekly figure without subtracting that is selling something.

The mistakes that cost most

• Quoting without photographs. You will underprice, and you will argue about it in a stairwell.
• Agreeing to take waste away without registration. One fine wipes out months.
• Running on a private van policy. One refused claim ends the business.
• Filling the diary with long-distance single items. Empty return miles are the quiet killer of this trade.
• Not asking for the review or the next booking. Movers get repeat work constantly, house moves, storage runs, deliveries, and almost nobody asks. See how to get your first reviews.