Nine years in the same little van
She's white. She has a dent over the left rear wheel from a parking incident that wasn't my fault but was definitely my problem. She is, in the deepest sense of the word, mine.
Clients ask me, pretty often, why I haven't "upgraded." It's a fair question. A bigger van would let me carry more. A newer one would break down less. A wrapped one would be a traveling billboard. All of that is true, and I've done the math on all of it, and every year I do the math again and end up in the same place.
What actually matters in a detail business is the craft, the reliability, and the relationship. The van is a toolbox on wheels. A toolbox doesn't need to be pretty. It needs to start in the morning and carry what you need to where the work is.
She starts in the morning. She carries what I need. When she eventually decides she's done — and she will, someday, maybe sooner than I want to think about — I'll find another one just like her, used, a little dented, and we'll go from there. I'm not in the van business. I'm in the car-care business. The van is just how I get to your driveway.
— Rosa