Mission Accomplished; my entire life packed up and relocated. For the benefit of anyone who may be thinking about hiring a van, I shall share my learning points.
I hired the van from Thrifty – £35 for 24 hrs (inc 20% discount tues-thurs), and spent about £30 on fuel for ~230 miles of driving. I also opted to spend another £9 on better insurance (excess reduced from £500 to £150).
The van was a current Ford Transit with 30k miles on the clock; the smallest, lightest, and least powerful in the range (short wheelbase, 85PS 2.0L diesel FWD with a low roof). They have the longer wheelbase vans too, but I didn’t need that for my trip. This van/engine is fine for any “normal” tasks – moving house, transporting domestic type things, but I wouldn’t want to be putting industrial palettes in it. The thrifty vans have a fibreboard lining on the payload space, with securing hooks mostly recessed into it, a bulkhead between driver and cargo, three seats in the front, and a radio :-)
Things that are useful to know if you’re considering hiring a van:

• If you’ve never driven a large vehicle, take it easy to begin with. They’re cumbersome buggers. Everything’s different to a car; seating position, view, gears, power, handling.
• They’re wide, but not that wide. I drove through a 7 ft width restriction with this one – needed to fold in the mirrors, but was otherwise fine. Remember your width when you’re driving it.
• They’re long, and you’re sitting over the front axle. You can’t steer in to a corner like you would with a car, you have to take wide turns. You need to compensate for this when you’re parking it in a bay, too. Think about where the rear wheels are, and drive the front to control the rear.
• You have no rear-view mirror. The side mirrors on the latest transits are very good, with excellent blind-spot mirrors underneath. Take the time to set them up properly before you set off. If you’re trying to parallel park, open the window and lean out, or get someone to help.
• They’re all very powerful. Even the 85PS that I had is plenty to spin the wheels if that’s what you’re into. The brakes are similarly powerful, and fitted with ABS by default. If you’re driving an older van you might not have the ABS, so be aware of how much energy the thing is carrying, and how long it’ll take to shed that without skidding.

• Tie your cargo down properly. It’s very disconcerting to hear things bashing around behind you, and dangerous if heavy things are moving.

  So there you go. I think that a total of £75 to shift all my stuff down the M1 is pretty good value. The bigger vans aren’t much more expensive – another tenner for a long wheelbase transit, and £10 more than that for a Merc Sprinter 311. If you’re feeling brave, you can get a Luton for £75/day…

  This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2005 at 21:03 and is filed under General, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.