A VAN AND A MAN AND .... A BASKETBALL

I play basketball for the Mike Pero Nelson Giants and I needed work that would fit in and around the playing season.

My first thought was about getting myself a contract with a local courier company or a franchise. My second (and better) thought was to create my own courier business.

That's when my Mum Janie and I came up with the concept. We could see that lots of people needed to move stuff fast and efficiently and cost-effectively. 

They needed wheels and muscle. - I could provide them for a predictable and reasonable price.

That’s how Van and a Man started.

​The idea was easy, getting my first van on a tight budget was a bit more of a challenge. I talked it over with Alex Oliver and Shane Drummond from The Car Company Nelson over a few ales at the Turf Hotel on a Thursday night and they came up trumps. That very day they’d traded a Ford Transit Van and that became my flagship vehicle for Man and a Van.

Small one-off jobs started to come in. It was the basketball off season so I did some cold calling on the bigger freight companies to see if they needed any help.  Almost straight away one of them had me supplementing their work  and soon a couple of my contract drivers were on the job too. 

Before long we needed a second van to handle the one-off smaller jobs. I added a Toyota Hi Ace to the fleet. Bought it off the side of the road - not the wisest move as it turned out. It was a rust bucket and cost a lot to make safe and road worthy. Lesson learned!