The London 2012 Olympics are less than a year away now and van hire companies throughout London and the South East are expecting to experience a peak in demand for daily van rental before, during and after the games.

Business demand is likely to be especially high, as businesses such as couriers, catering suppliers, companies supporting the Olympic infrastructure (think electricity, television, catering, hospitality, athlete and staff transport), shops and restaurants all experience additional demand for their services.

In addition to this, business will have to deal with the disruption and limited access resulting from the Olympic Route Network (ORN). VanRental.co.uk understand that the ORN will be a network of lane closures on roads linking Olympic venues – the closed lanes will be used to ensure that athletes and games personnel can make their way between locations efficiently and to a reliable schedule. It will, of course, have the opposite effect on local businesses and deliveries…

The ORN is another reason to expect an increase in demand for van hire – some businesses may have to reschedule their delivery activities into non-Olympic hours – meaning additional vans will be required at certain times of day. For example, some businesses might decide to carry out all delivery operations at night, rather than distributing them evenly throughout the day.

You can full details of the ORN and travel advice for businesses here, on the London 2012 website.

Tips For Businesses

If your business operates in London or the south-east, then you need to start planning your van hire requirements now. If you believe you will need additional van capacity then VanRental.co.uk would strongly advise that you book vans well in advance.

You may have to run the risk of having too much capacity – but having an empty rental van for one day will probably have less impact on your bottom line than being short of a van for one day…

Tips For Individuals

Demand for van hire traditionally peaks during summer months anyway – both individuals and businesses often find they need additional van hire in July and August. It is a popular time to move house and for other sporting, musical and DIY activities that all require hire vans.

Although the Olympics will not cause individual demand for van hire to increase, high business demand for hire vans will mean that individual renters will need to plan further ahead than usual if they do not wish to be disappointed.

What’s Next? In an upcoming post, we will list all of the Olympic locations in London and the South East. Olympic events are taking place over a wide area and the impact of these on van rental companies and other local businesses will be high, even outside London.

When I wrote about the upcoming Tour of Britain recently, I forgot about a more obvious use for van hire in the cycling world – one-way van hire after one-way bike rides. Although a more obvious solution for getting home after a long journey is a train, taking bicycles on a train can require careful planning, especially if you are in a group – as Sunderland charity cyclist Fraser Kennedy recently found out.

Fraser had just finished the ultimate one-way bike ride in the UK; Land’s End to John O’Groats. Having done all the legwork and raised £2,500 for charity, he was looking forward to a relaxing journey home by rail.

Unfortunately, ScotRail had other plans and refused to allow several members of his party on board because they had not made cycle reservations. ScotRail apparently requires bike reservations on long-distance journeys, including all journeys between Wick, Thurso and Inverness.

The end result for poor old Fraser was that he had to find a van hire company in Inverness who could rent him a van (one way) to complete his journey back to Sunderland, resulting in a lot of extra cost and frustration.

The moral of the story is that Britain’s railways do not welcome cyclists in the way they did when all trains had guard vans. If you want to travel any distance by rail in the UK, make sure you plan it carefully and make the appropriate reservations along the way.

Band van hire specialist Tiger Tours has a new type of splitter van – the mini splitter. This is basically a crew cab Mercedes Vito with a properly boarded-off load compartment that ensures the security of your backline and the safety of your passengers, in the event of any emergency braking.

Being a Merc (even though it’s a van), the Vito is a very pleasant place to spend time and will use less fuel and be easier to park than its bigger brothers.

If your tour group is no larger than six (including the driver) and you don’t have a large backline, then one of these could be ideal. Rental rates start from just £70 +VAT per day – contact Tiger Tours for more details.

Whether you are a private individual or a business, there are plenty of good reasons to hire a van instead of buying or leasing one (or using an unsuitable car):

Here are our top 10 reasons to rent a van:

1. Less wear and tear on your own car – why scuff up the interior of a decent car for the sake of a £40 van rental?
2. Easier to load than a car if you’re moving large objects – large, flat floor and wide-opening doors.
3. Gives you the opportunity to try a vehicle before buying it – can’t decide between a Transit and a Trafic or a Combo and a Caddy? (sorry, I couldn’t resist it…)
4. Many rental companies will now collect you from your home or workplace and take you to their branch to collect the van – so you don’t need your own transport at all.
5. You need a van for a few months, you aren’t sure how long: Long-term van rental is often very competitively priced and avoids the commitment of a lease or contract purchase plan. Many hire companies (like Europcar) offer long-term hire, but consider services like Norflex, too.
6. Your van broke down / was pranged yesterday and you have a busy schedule today: Hired vans are the perfect way to provide cover at short notice for fleet vehicles while they are repaired or serviced.
7. Hiring a van can be cheaper than paying for delivery of an item or using a ‘man & van’ service.
8. You are a small business that need to make deliveries – but not every day. Idle vans cost nearly as much as busy vans to run – so think carefully about whether you actually need a dedicated, full-time van. Many hire companies will be very flexible to met the need of regular business customers.

I’m sure there are loads more reasons than this – if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below.

Hot on the heels of this year’s exciting Tour de France (we were backing Europcar‘s Thomas Voeckler – 10 days in the yellow jersey) comes this year’s Tour of Britain, which takes place from the 11th to the 18th of September.

Its eight stages and British terrain may seem pretty middling after the brutal challenges of the Pyrenees and the Alps, but the Tour of Britain still manages to encompass three of the UK’s four countries (missing out Northern Ireland) and covers some great scenery, including the Scottish Borders (the first stage is from Peebles – Dumfries) and parts of Devon, Cumbria, North Yorkshire, and central Wales.

Although the race is now close, it is not too late to book either minibus hire or van rental for all or part of the Tour – whether you are competing, supporting the riders, volunteering, or just spectating with like-minded friends.

Here are the start and finish locations of each stage to help you work out your requirements (remember, we can offer van and minibus hire in almost all of these locations):

• Stage 1: Peebles – Dumfries (11/09)
• Stage 2: Kendal – Blackpool (12/09)
• Stage 3: Stoke-on-Trent (13/09)
• Stage 4: Welshpool – Caerphilly (14/09)
• Stage 5: Exeter – Exmouth (15/09)
• Stage 6: Taunton – Wells (16/09)
• Stage 7: Bury St Edmunds – Sandringham (17/09)
• Stage 8: London (18/09 – this is a two-part stage consisting of a time trial and a circuit race)

You can’t (yet) arrange van hire on eBay, but you may well need to hire a van if you have purchased one of the larger items for sale on eBay – a new sofa, garden furniture or a fridge-freezer, for example.

If you are shopping on eBay for anything that won’t obviously be posted, it is always worth checking what shipping methods the seller is offering before you make a bid. Some sellers will not ship at any price and will insist on collection only. Don’t be the kind of plonker who makes a winning bid and then realises that the item they have bought is Collection Only but they can’t collect it…

If the item you have bought is not too far away, hiring a van might be cheaper than using a courier or delivery service. These usually charge a per-mile rate – find out what’s on offer and compare it to the cost of hiring a van for a day, plus the cost of the diesel you will use. Fuel consumption on modern vans is pretty decent – even large vans will manage 30mpg on a long run, although short journeys and driving through town can be much worse.

Remember to check out the size of the item you need to collect and make sure the van you hire is big enough – but not too big. There’s no point in wasting money on a van that’s needlessly large.

All vans up to 3.5t (that’s almost all rental vans) can be driven on a regular car licence, although most hire companies have a minimum age requirement for van hire that’s somewhere between 21 and 25 – check before booking if this is an issue for you.

The idea of crossing the channel to buy a load of cheap wine and beer does not seem as popular as it used too, but it is still done and can still make good sense, especially if you live close enough to Dover for an easy day trip and would like to buy a reasonable amount of wine.

You may be able to manage with a large car, but if you want to buy a reasonable amount – for a large wedding, party or family occasion – you may find that a car is not up to the job of carrying that much weight and you need to hire a van.

We have produced a ‘Booze Cruise Van Rental Guide‘ that covers all the things you need to know if you are planning a big wine or tobacco shopping trip. Here are our top tips:

• Try to limit the maximum number of people to three – most vans seat three. Restricting your party to three people will leave plenty of payload free for wine and beer supplies – bottled drinks are surprisingly heavy.
• A bottle of wine weighs around 1.2kg – so a box of 6 weighs about 7.5kg. Champagne and sparkling wine bottles weigh much more because the glass is thicker. If three of you are buying a lot, you may end up exceeding the maximum weight for your van.
• Dover-Calais by ferry (90 minutes) is usually the cheapest way to cross the channel and there are lots of big supermarkets and wine warehouses near Calais (e.g. Pidou, although the (in)famous Eastenders has now closed)
• Eurotunnel (Folkestone-Calais) is quicker, taking just 35 minutes – and Folkestone is slightly quicker to get to for most people
• Remember that although there are theoretically no limits to how much alcohol or tobacco you can import from another EU country, customs will take an interest if you have a really huge amount. The current guidelines are:

• 3,200 cigarettes
• 200 cigars
• 400 cigarillos
• 3kg of tobacco
• 110 litres of beer
• 90 litres of wine
• 10 litres of spirits
• 20 litres of fortified wine (for example port or sherry)

Boozes cruises can still pay, although in reality the savings are not as big as they used to be five or ten years ago. The key is efficient planning and clubbing together – three people, three sets of purchases and one hire van can make the whole day seem very cheap!

Remember that not all van hire companies let you take vans abroad  – and it needs to be arranged in advance. Click here for our European van hire guide.

If you and some friends are heading down to Cornwall (or any of the other good surfing areas in the UK) to do some surfing, you may find that your normal wheels are not quite up to the job.

Either you won’t have enough space for you, your mates and your surf boards, or you just don’t want to turn up in your old Vectra – you want to live the dream with a VW Transporter.

The good news is that there are quite a few van rental companies that do offers VW vans – one VanRental.co.uk advertiser (near Dartford) only has VWs.

If you are planning to hire a van for a surfing trip and haven’t driven one before, check out our van driving tips – in short, remember that vans are wider, heavier and don’t handle as well as cars and have lower speed limits. That said, a VW Transporter is about the best-handling and most luxurious medium van you’ll find, so it you should still enjoy the drive.

Illegal immigrants trying to smuggle themselves onto Channel ferries by climbing into lorries is old news – but the illegal immigrant problem goes further and can apply to vans, too.

Leaving aside the problem of drivers deliberately trying to smuggle people into the UK (like this recent case at Hull), anyone driving a big van or a luton should still take care to keep the rear doors locked at all times, even when they are in the vehicle.

I often see luton vans driving around with unlocked roller doors – this may be an acceptable risk in the UK, but I would not recommend it if you are anywhere near a ferry port. This does not just apply to Dover-Calais crossings, either – as the case above shows, immigrants are quite willing to endure a longer crossing such as Hull-Rotterdam and perhaps even the Portsmouth/Plymouth-Bilbao service. Someone with a half-full hire van driving back from Spain would make an ideal target.

If you are in a hired luton van with a roller door that has no lock (quite common), make sure you take your own padlock to keep it secure while you are using the van, especially if you are driving abroad. Remember that you will be responsible for whatever ends up in the van – whether it’s illegal people or illegal drugs. You may also want to protect your own possessions from being stolen!

Both Customs and the UK Border Agency seem to be increasingly active at ferry ports. I recently travelled to the continent on the Hull-Rotterdam crossing and my van was stopped by customs for an inspection on the way out. On the way back, we were sniffed by a sniffer dog before boarding at Rotterdam and when we arrived in Hull, we found that the UK Border Agency were having a field day and checking everyone’s vehicle details on the computer as they came off the ferry.

The UK Border Agency makes no secret of the range of facilities at their disposal – sniffer dogs, heartbeat monitors and CO2 detectors all form part of its armoury, especially at Dover, which is the main point of entry to the UK for illegal immigrants. I have also had my van checked over by sniffer dogs at Rotterdam and Bilbao before now, so the chance of detection is quite hig, whichever route you are travelling on.

The law generally holds the driver responsible for the contents of their vehicle, even if people or drugs have been smuggled into the vehicle without the driver knowing. The best protection is good security and an open pair of eyes – you don’t want to be the one that gets caught out.

7.5t lorries are considerably bigger than vans. If you are driving one for the first time, you will need to take care.

So far in this series, I’ve looked at small, medium, large and luton vans. But what if you need something bigger still?

In terms of van hire, the main option available if you need something bigger than a luton or extra-long wheelbase panel van is 7.5t truck hire.

7.5 tonne lorries are far larger than even the largest of vans but also have a much greater payload. The difference between weight and space is important – sometimes, vans cannot carry enough weight, even when they have enough space.

As a general rule, a 7.5 tonne lorry will have a payload of around 3,000kg – approximately 2-3 times that of most 3.5 tonne vans. This will vary depending on the lorry’s body, make and model and whether it has a tail lift.

Can I Drive A 7.5t Lorry On My Car Licence?

Many drivers can drive 7.5t lorries on their car licences – it depends on when you passed your car driving test.

Drivers who passed their car test before 01/01/1997 should have category C1 on their driving licence. C1 is required to drive a goods vehicle with a maximum laden weight of between 3,500kg and 7,500kg.

Drivers who passed their car test after 01/01/1997 will not have C1 entitlement unless they have taken an additional C1 driving test.

You should also be aware that if you are driving a 7.5t lorry for hire or reward (i.e. not purely for personal use, such as moving house) you will be subject to tachograph rules.

As the driver, it is your responsibility to be aware of this and to comply. The Business Link website has a good introductory guide to tachograph law and the Direct Gov website is the best place to start if you are looking for information about driving licence requirements for goods vehicles.

About 7.5t Lorries

As their name suggests, 7.5t lorries have a MAM of 7,500kg. This class of vehicle really includes all goods vehicles (vans and lorries) with a MAM (maximum laden weight) of between 3,500kg and 7,500kg.

Speed limits for lorries up to 7.5t are the same as for vans up to 3.5t:

• Single carriageways: 50mph
• Dual carriageways: 60mph
• Motorways: 70mph

However, almost all vans and lorries over 3.5t are now fitted with speed limiters set to 56mph, so the dual carriageway and motorway speed limits are now irrelevant.

Driving 7.5t Lorries

If you have not driven a lorry before, you will find driving a 7.5t truck quite different to driving a van or car.

The seating position places you directly above the front wheels, meaning that you are further forward in the vehicle than you are used to and may feel that you have to turn into corners later than usual in order to get the correct line (and avoid the pavement).

Similarly, braking and handling will be quite different to a van or car and the handbrake is likely to be an air brake, controlled by a lever on the dashboard.

On top of all of this, a 7.5t box lorry will be much wider, higher and longer than anything you have driven before. Make sure you know the overall height and width of the vehicle and keep an eye out for low bridges and other restrictions. Do not turn into roads with a signposted 6’6″ width restriction – you will get stuck.

Make sure your mirrors are correctly adjusted and that you understand how to use them to check the space around you. Be careful and don’t try to rush.

Disclaimer

All the information in this article is provided for information only and is especially not intended to be a definitive statement on tachograph law. If you need to know the exact dimensions or payload of the vehicle you are hiring, you will need to speak to the company concerned when making your booking.

It is standard practice in the car and van hire industry to specify a ‘typical’ model when customers make bookings – this won’t necessarily be the exact make or model you get. Usually, this doesn’t matter, but it can do if space or weight is tight.