Are you hiring a van for the first time? This checklist will help you avoid costly problems.

Although renting a van is pretty similar to hiring a car, there are a few extra pitfalls you need to watch out for. We’ve put together a 5-point checklist based on our long experience of van hire to help you avoid problems that could be costly — or even dangerous.

1. Tall and wide

Vans are higher and wider than cars and if you aren’t used to it, you can get caught out. A particular problem in the UK is height restrictions on car parks. Finding somewhere to park in a town centre isn’t normally difficult in a car, but you may be surprised how many car parks are off limits to vans, even quite modestly-sized models. Anything over 2m high is generally dodgy, but check the car park’s height barrier as they aren’t all the same. Make sure you know how high your van is — or be very cautious.

2. Tyres

Make sure your van’s tyres are correctly inflated before you load it — and then check again afterwards. A tyre that looks correctly inflated when the van is empty can turn out to be almost flat once the van is fully loaded. This has happened to me more than once — I suspect that many rental companies don’t check tyre pressures very often, they just have a quick look to see if any tyres look flat. The trouble is that this doesn’t work when you’ve got a few hundred kilos of extra gear in the back.

Underinflated tyres are far more likely to puncture or blow out — not fun at 70mph on the motorway (or any other time, really). What’s more, most van hire companies will charge you for replacement tyres unless the damage is due to “normal wear and tear”, which is hard to prove with a blowout.

3. Loaded down

Make sure you don’t overload your van. Depending on the size of van and the load you are moving, this is easy/hard to do. Paper (of any kind) and liquids (e.g. wine and beer) are both surprisingly heavy and a large load of either can easily overload a typical rental van. Building materials are also surprisingly heavy if you need more than a very small amount.

If in doubt, ask the van hire company what the van’s payload is and work out what your load is likely to be. If you are stopped while driving and found to be overloaded, you will probably be prevented from continuing until the load has been reduced and may even be prosecuted.

4. Security

Luton vans can be a particular problem for security. The rear roller shutters do not normally have locks. You will need to provide your own padlock.

Similarly, if you are hiring a panel van, check whether it has central locking and make sure it actually works, especially if the van is an older model.

5. Eddie Stobart, not Eddie Irvine*

When driving a hire van, slow and steady is the name of the game, especially when you go round corners. It’s easy to forget that all of your worldly goods are being hurled from one side of the van to the other — until you open the door and find them in pieces…

When loading your van, start from the front and load right up to the bulkhead. Make sure nothing can shift forwards or from side to side and don’t hesitate to tie/strap things down if they can move. Likewise, if the van isn’t full all the way to the back, then use a strap/rope/plank of wood/etc to make sure that things can’t slide backwards too easily.

Finally, remember that van speed limits are lower than car speed limits — click here for our van speed limit guide.

*Apologies to F1 fans too young to know who Eddie Irvine is…