The guy made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I repeat: Could. Not. Refuse.
Here's my situation: for most of the year, mid-March to mid-December, I caretake over a dozen summer homes here in the beautiful Thousand Islands--and in my spare time keep up my aged mother's house and rental cottage. I open and close the places, handle most of their repairs and renovations, deal with their plumbing and electrical issues and emergencies. In some of the places I have literally redone every room in their house or cottage, and scraped and painted the place two or three times in the last couple-three decades.
So I do a lot of carpentry. A lot of painting. A fair amount of plumbing and electrical work. Some mechanical work. I've designed and built additions and add-ons, transformed funky old sheds into cozy guest cottages, upgraded every door and window in the place, duplicated lost gingerbread, closed in porches, redone kitchens, added bathrooms. I spend most of my time working on old buildings that are not plumb, blithely unacquainted with concept of level, about as square as Russell Brand, badly plumbed, jangledly wired, and built long before there were accepted standards for stud and rafter spacing, or headers over doors and windows; buildings that are old and irredeemably idiosyncratic. To make things more interesting, many of them have been 'improved' over multiple decades by previous owners or generations who did the work themselves on weekends, in between fishing trips, and fueled by large amounts of beer.
So I have to have at hand a large number and variety of tools.
And there's the rub.
More about that below the orange caution squib.
Decades ago I went through a couple old Dodge pickups with a cap for a work vehicle. Then for several years I used those old behemoth Oldsmobile station wagons, rear seats removed and replaced with tool storage compartments. I could carry 14' lumber inside those babies, ladders and lumber on the roof. Then ten-twelve years ago I got former bus/cargo vehicle from a boys camp in Nevada: a 1984 Ford one-ton stretch van. Retrofitted it with shelving along both sides inside, ladder racks on the sides and roof.
When that died of rust and front end arthritis (it had over 300,000 miles when I got it) the only thing I could find to replace it at the time was a '88 Chevy 1 ton van, standard length. I put shelves in, ladder racks on roof and sides, but it just didn't have the room of that old Ford. That was four years ago, and almost from the start I was hitting critical mass from all the stuff I carry.
If you're not in a line of work like mine you're probably wondering what sort of stuff would demand so much room a van would feel cramped. So, a digression. A listing of some--and I repeat some--of the stuff I carry: portable contractor's table saw, 10" miter/chop saw, 500 pound capacity folding sawhorses, Workmate, cordless saw, drills, screwguns, chargers and battery packs, corded circular saw, 2 saws-alls, jigsaw, router and bits, boxes of bits, drivers, blades for saws, drills and drivers, basic carpenter kit, hand, hammer, and electric stapler/brad driver, plus planes, chisels, rafter jigs, crow bars, pry bars, several 4' wood clamps, and smaller clamps. Palm, detail, and belt sanders with attachments, sandpaper sheets and belts. Various squares and levels. Tools for doing steel roofing, including power and hand cutters, metal-forming pliers, roof jacks, and a box of assorted roofing screws. For plumbing there are regular, chain and strap wrenches, strong-arms for those wrenches, pipe cutters, flaring tool kit, toilet pumps, pipe-sweating torch and materials, divided carriers for o-rings, faucet and pump repair parts. Electrician's kit with tools and meters, automotive electrical kit. Painter's tools and brushes, a bale of drop cloths, half a dozen fan decks, paint shields. Various electrical parts cleaners, spray lubricants and adhesives, and paint removers. Air compressor, chest waders, shorter boots, and wading shoes. Chain saw with fuel, bar oil, spare parts and sharpening jig. Basic masonry and sheet-rocking tools. Jacks of various kinds, including a 2 ton automotive floor jack, and occasionally a 15 ton railroad jack. Multiple lengths of chain, an assortment of ratchet straps, and rope. Several extension cords and power strips. 1.5 ton chain-type come-along. One tote and two boxes of mechanic's tools, including 1/2 inch drive stuff and an electric impact driver. Two totes of various screwdrivers, pliers, Vicegrips, pump pliers and other hand tools. One tote of odd other unclassifiable tools and odd stuff. Three--no, four crates of assorted plumbing parts, two crates of electrical parts and wire. About 1 milk crate's worth of nails of various kinds and sizes, that same amount again in interior and exterior screws, large and small bolts, and half a crate of hinges, antique door parts and weird hardware. Six and eight foot stepladders, 2 foot step stool. 16 and 28 foot extension ladders, and an adjustable base for uneven ground. I only carry my really big ladders when I need them, same as the steel scaffolding.
Plus I'm always carrying materials: plywood, flooring, dimension lumber, trim lumber, bagged concrete, rolls of insulation or pipe.
So like I said, I was really feeling pinched for space. The thing was so stuffed that cutting a fart inside risked blowing the back doors open, and anything not on the top layer was nearly impossible to find.
Then a guy I know bought one of those spiffy new Transits last fall, and put his old work vehicle up for sale. I looked at it this spring. It was enormous, and way the hell out of my price range--over ten grand. But it didn't sell, and he was tired of having it still on his insurance and taking up space--a lot of space. So he gave his wife a message to give to my wife, who passed it on to me.
He would sell me the vehicle, which he called the White Elephant, for a third of his asking price--a third of its actual value. My wife insisted I buy it, because it would hold all my stuff, and because it has functioning heat and air-conditioning. My old van was an oven in the summer and a meat-locker in the winter.
That's how I ended up the bemused owner of a 2000 Ford E 450 cargo/work van. A hulking monster that makes a Hummer look like a MGB, and shrivels the truck nuts of the most macho pickups. Shelving inside--that I had to add to--lockable storage boxes on the outside, ladder racks. 7.3 liter diesel engine. Dual wheels, 2+ ton carrying capacity, 10 ton towing capacity. It even has a half-ton crane in the back.
The thing just turned 81,000 miles. It will last me forever, since I put on 2500 to 3000 miles per year for work, most jobs less than 5 miles from home. It's built to last 400k to 500k miles.
We're pretty eco-conscious. We have a wildlife rehabilitation practice, mostly heat with wood, recycle, grow a lot of our own food without chemicals, paid extra for the front-load washer, don't fly, other main vehicle a 2012 4 cylinder Ford Escape that averages 28 MPG. We use our small AC bedroom window unit less than 10 hours a year. On the face of it needing a vehicle that weighs nearly five tons empty to cart my weary carcass, which weighs less than 140 pounds, around seems absurd, but it's not really about me, it's about all that stuff I listed above.
I'm getting about 12 MPG with this beast, which is actually better than I got with the Chevy or the Ford, the four speed transmission with overdrive counts for a lot. No heavy-duty truck or van does all that well for mileage; a Sumo always eats more than a ballet dancer. I'm 61, and like I said, this is the last work vehicle I will ever buy. It's big enough for all my stuff, big enough for me to use as an on-site workshop. I've already used the crane to move a wood-splitter for one client, and transport a generator for another. On some jobs I'll be able to leave it parked except when hauling materials, and commute in our old '06 Escape.
Yet I can't help feeling an occasional twinge of guilt for driving something big enough to act as a garage for a Smart Car, even though my footprint isn't really any bigger than it was before. There's no escaping that good old hippie tree-hugger liberal guilt. But the amount of stuff I need for work would snap the axles of a Prius, and I'm too poor for some exotic hybrid that would cost more than I make in a decade.
I've made a good choice, a sensible choice, a prudent choice. I would've had to have been crazy not to buy it for that price. I mostly feel good about it.
But every now and then I get that twinge. . .
*
Note for the eagle-eyed: No, I don't do the work that requires all those tools from mid-December until mid-March. During that period my work vehicle stays parked, and so do I, after a fashion. I spend that time on my other badly-paying career: writing. In over 35 years I have sold forty-some stories to the SF magazine ANALOG, and a scattering of short fiction to other genre mags. I've had two mass market paperback novels published, FLESH AND SILVER, and CALL FROM A DISTANT SHORE. I currently have the Kindle edition novels FESTAVAEL, BLOOD AND BREAD, ZERO DAY BABY, and NAKED HUNCH available on Amazon for your reading pleasure, with at least one more already-written novel coming online this winter, and a new one gestating.