Whether you have a small business with just one cargo van or a national fleet with thousands, it’s important to find ways to get the most out of your van(s). In an electrical contractor’s world, your cargo van is your work horse, but there are multiple ways to mitigate damage, keep costs low and maximize its resale value to invest into a newer model as the years go on.

In the fleet world, it’s now often recommended that a work van is replaced around 85,000 miles. This is for multiple reasons, including:

• Depreciation – Vehicles depreciate quickly from the moment they’re driven off the lot, but tend to hold their value around the 85,000-mile mark. Vans below the 100,000-mile mark are easier to sell at a higher price because they’re perceived as more reliable.
• Fuel savings – Newer vehicles are simply designed to get better gas mileage.
• Insurance costs – Newer vehicles also have more built-in safety features that tend to lower insurance costs, especially for a fleet.
• Maintenance costs – Typically, a vehicle’s warranty qualifies free services until about 60,000 miles. As the van sees more miles, maintenance and repairs will become more frequent. 
• Operational reliability – Older vans break down. It’s a fact of life. When a work van breaks down while on the way to a service call, not only is that money lost for the repairs, but it’s now lost revenue.

While reselling a van at the 85,000-mile mark will help to maximize the value, there’s more to be done to truly maximize on that investment. The structural integrity of the van over time and the inevitable dings and dents from being loaded and unloaded countless times at job sites can significantly impact resale value.

Structural damage - Most van shelving systems require drilling into the cargo van to secure plus nuts or rivets. While this is a widely accepted process in the fleet world, drilling into the van’s frame, even when done properly and in noncritical areas, affects the resale value by up to 15%. If the drilling is poorly done or in what is considered a critical or load-bearing area of the van’s frame, the resale value can be reduced up to 30% as it can cause long-term structural weakness and reduced load capacity.

Aesthetic damage – Dings, dents and scratches are inevitable in a cargo van that’s being loaded and unloaded with tools, conduit, ladders and other materials on a daily basis. Depending on the severity of the damage, this can affect a cargo van’s resale value anywhere from 5% to 30%.

To mitigate this damage, Bott has designed modular storage equipment that keeps your tools and materials off the floor and securely tucked away without any drilling required. Complete with protective, nonslip van floor kits, bott Smartvan protects your van’s interior from bumps and scratches, and all bott Smartvan equipment installs with vehicle-specific brackets to mount to preexisting factory-threaded holes. You can browse crash-tested van equipment at www.bottsmartvan.com.