Van Stock: How to Stop Losing Half a Day to the Supplier Run

Ask most trade business owners where their week goes and they will talk about quoting, paperwork and chasing invoices. Almost nobody names the real culprit: the second trip to the supplier. One forgotten fitting turns a two-hour job into a four-hour job, and it happens quietly enough that it never shows up as a problem worth fixing. Sorting out what lives in the van is one of the cheapest changes you can make, and one of the few that gives you time back the same week.

Why the second trip costs more than you think

The drive is only part of it. There is the queue at the trade counter, the conversation with the bloke behind it, the drive back, and the ten minutes it takes to get your head back into the job. Then there is the knock-on effect: the next appointment slips, the customer after that gets a call saying you are running late, and the last job of the day gets rushed or rebooked.

Do that twice a week and you have lost most of a working day, plus the goodwill of two customers who were told you would be there at two.

Start with the jobs you already did

Do not try to imagine what you might need. Go back through your last twenty or thirty jobs and write down every item you had to leave site for. Your invoices or job notes will tell you most of it, and your memory will fill the rest.

What you will find is that the same six or eight items account for most of the trips. It is rarely anything exotic. It is the common size of a fitting you stock in the wrong diameter, the fixings you always run out of, the standard part that fails on every second service call. That list is your van stock list, and you did not have to guess at it.

Sort stock into three tiers

Not everything deserves a permanent spot. Splitting your materials into three groups keeps the van workable and stops it turning into a rolling warehouse.

• Always on board. The items that appear on most jobs and cost little to hold. Fixings, common fittings, consumables, tape, sealant, standard lengths.
• Job specific. Ordered or picked up for a particular job, loaded the night before, and not restocked afterwards.
• Never in the van. Bulky, expensive or slow-moving items that you collect only when a job calls for them.

Most of the benefit comes from getting the first tier right. If an item costs you a trip more than once a month and fits in a drawer, it belongs on board.

Give every item a home and a level

A van full of the right stock is still useless if nobody can find anything. Give each item a fixed place, label the drawers and bins, and set a minimum level for each one: two boxes of these, six of those, one spare of the part that always fails.

The point of a minimum level is that restocking becomes a decision anyone can make without asking you. When the bin is down to its last one, it goes on the list. No judgement call, no ringing the boss.

Restock on a schedule, not in a panic

Pick a fixed time each week, ideally at the end of the day before your busiest run, and do a quick walk around the van against the list. Ten minutes on a Thursday afternoon beats forty minutes at the trade counter on a Tuesday morning when a customer is waiting.

If you run more than one vehicle, the same ten minutes applies to each, and it is worth making it part of the apprentice's routine rather than yours. It is a genuinely useful way for someone new to learn what the business actually uses.

Make it the same across every van

Once you have more than one vehicle, standardise the layout. Same bins, same positions, same labels. It sounds fussy until the day someone has to take a different van and can still find the fittings without ringing anyone. It also makes stock checks quick, because you are looking for the same things in the same places every time.

Photograph the finished layout and keep the photo somewhere the crew can see it. That is your standard, and it makes it obvious when a van has drifted away from it.

Review it with the seasons

What you need in the van in February is not what you need in July. Heating and cooling parts, storm damage consumables, drainage fittings and the like all move with the weather. Twice a year, look at the list again against the jobs you actually did in the previous six months and adjust.

This is also the moment to strip out the items that have sat untouched all year. Dead stock takes up the space you need for the things you actually run out of.

The short version

• Build the list from your last twenty or thirty jobs, not from guesswork
• Split materials into always on board, job specific, and never in the van
• Give every item a labelled home and a minimum level
• Restock at a fixed time each week rather than when you run out
• Standardise the layout across every vehicle and photograph it
• Review the list twice a year against the work you actually did

Frequently Asked Questions

How much stock should I carry in the van?

Enough to cover the items that cause repeat trips, and no more. The useful test is frequency against cost: if something has sent you back to the supplier more than once in the last month and it is small and inexpensive to hold, carry it. Bulky or expensive items are better collected per job.

Does carrying more stock tie up too much cash?

The items that cause most repeat trips are usually low-value consumables and common fittings, so the amount involved is modest compared with the hours lost. The stock worth watching is the slow-moving, expensive gear, which is exactly what should not be living in the van.

How do I stop stock walking off or going missing?

Fixed homes and labelled bins do most of the work, because a missing item is obvious at a glance. Beyond that, having one person responsible for each vehicle's weekly check makes it clear who owns the problem, and makes discrepancies easy to spot early rather than at the end of a quarter.