I get the appeal of having your own delivery van. You can decide when orders leave, who takes them and how customers are treated at the door. If you’ve been looking at courier invoices and wondering where all that money goes, buying a vehicle can seem pretty reasonable.
The bit I’d spend more time on is what happens after you get the keys.
Someone has to load it, drive it, work out the route and deal with the customer who isn’t home. Then there’s servicing, insurance and finding another way to deliver when the van is off the road.
None of that makes owning a van a bad idea. But I’d want to know what a fairly boring Tuesday looks like before buying one.
Would it actually be busy?
This is where I’d start, before looking at makes and models.
Take a few ordinary weeks of orders and put the delivery addresses on a map. Are they mostly close together? Could one person cover them comfortably? Or would they spend half the afternoon driving out to one customer?
Ten deliveries can be a short local round or most of a day’s work. An order count on its own doesn’t tell you much.
I’d also be careful about planning around the busiest week of the year. It’s easy to picture a full van when orders are flying in. The monthly payment still comes out when things go quiet.
For furniture, appliances or anything that needs a bit of care at the door, I can see a stronger reason to keep deliveries in-house. You’re making decisions about handling and service as well as transport. For small parcels going all over the country, I’d need a much more convincing set of numbers.
Your time belongs in the calculation
The cost that’s easiest to leave out is your own time.
“I’ll do the deliveries myself for now” sounds inexpensive. And it might be manageable at first. But a few afternoons on the road means a few afternoons away from everything else.
Who answers customer questions while you’re driving? Who sorts out a stock issue? Do the jobs you couldn’t finish end up following you home?
I’d put a realistic cost against those hours, even if I wasn’t paying myself separately for them. Otherwise, you can end up comparing a courier’s full price with a version of your own costs that leaves out half the work.
The same goes for a failed delivery. Fuel is only part of it. Someone still has to contact the customer and arrange another attempt.
I’d check what happens before the van leaves
Before spending money on transport, I’d follow a few orders through the warehouse or stockroom.
When did the order arrive? When was someone able to pick it? Was the item where it was supposed to be? How long did it sit waiting to be packed?
If orders aren’t ready until late afternoon, having a vehicle outside won’t necessarily help.
That’s when I’d look at the wider setup. Do you need someone to collect finished parcels, or do you need help storing stock and getting orders ready in the first place?
If I were selling into Mexico, for example, I’d include a local fulfillment provider such as Cubbo in that comparison. I’d want to understand storage, packing, dispatch and returns before deciding which parts to manage myself.
There’s no reason to assume one arrangement will suit every business. It depends on the work you need help with.
You can keep some deliveries and hand over the rest
I wouldn’t feel obliged to choose one system for every order.
A van might work well for nearby customers, particularly if you’re delivering bulky products or offering booked appointments. Orders further away could still go through a carrier.
That seems like a reasonable place to start if you have enough local demand but aren’t ready to take on every delivery.
You do need a simple way to decide which orders go where. Otherwise, someone ends up making that decision parcel by parcel while customers wait for an update.
The van would be my last decision
I’d work out the routes, the hours and the likely costs first. Then I’d look at the vehicle.
At that point, questions about load space, payload and access become easier to answer because you know what it has to carry and where it has to go.
And before signing a long agreement, I’d try to test the work through a suitable short-term arrangement. A few real delivery days will tell you things a spreadsheet misses: awkward parking, slow loading, difficult access and how much the route changes when one stop goes wrong.
I’d rather discover those details while I still had room to change my mind.