Nine years in the same little van
White, 2012, name's Pearl. Dent over the left rear wheel from a parking incident in 2019 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." Fair question. A bigger van would let me carry more. A newer one would break down less. A wrapped one would be a rolling billboard. All of that's true and I've done the math — every spring I do the math again and end up in the same place.
What actually matters in a detail business is the craft, the reliability of the craft, and the relationship. Van's a toolbox on wheels. Toolbox doesn't need to be pretty. 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. The shelving in the back got redone two winters ago by a cabinetmaker friend who accepted a full day's detail as payment (diagram on the kit page if you're curious). Tank got rebuilt last spring — pulled the baffles, replaced two leaky fittings, re-seated the pump. New alternator in June that she probably needed a year earlier. New serpentine belt in August. Running investment the last eighteen months: about eleven hundred dollars. Still less than one month of payments on a new full-size cargo van.
When she eventually decides she's done — and she will, someday, and probably sooner than I want to think about — I'll find another one just like her. Used, a little dented, a previous life as a plumber's rig or a florist's delivery. We'll go from there. I'm not in the van business. I'm in the car-care business. The van's just how I get to your driveway before the panels heat up.
— Rosa