Bought a van to pull my trailer yesterday, and this was sitting in the yard:
This retired FedEx van with only 450,000 miles on it can be bought for $4500. It has been meticulously maintained, and runs like a cummins diesel is supposed to. My thought is this: with this van I can outfit another crew for around $10,000.
Has anyone else in our community converted one of these, and if so what were/are your impressions?
I was toying with the idea of getting a van like that but I didnt want it to look old. I wanted a more modern body style for better first impression.
Now, with that being said, I’m not shooting the idea down. I like the trucks, but it just something I eliminated from my choices.
I’m just passing along some info from a retired mechanic customer.
His wife started a mobile boutique business and they bought a retired ‘bookmobile’ from the library. He said the one to get from a reliability/mechanical standpoint is the GM version and showed me a few reasons why.
I would think with over 400,000 miles that truck would need at least a transmission soon.
I 've always thought something like that or an old bread van would make a good little build. They’re roomy, like a box truck, just sit a lot lower and seem like would be easier to work out of. Of course you’d need to figure another 3k for a nice wrap. Think it would be a fun build though. I’ve always wondered why more people haven’t used them since you can find them pretty cheap.
I love them. That’s what I lost in there flood. Several of them. BUT, you’ll never keep the heat out of them. Machines ran rough all the time
You got any pics of the inside of one of them built out?
I gotta dig thru an old phone but I’ll find them.
It might already be rebuilt. 
It looks well maintained but 400k miles. That is a lot of miles and it’s not highway if it’s a FedEx truck.
It looks familiar
My thoughts exactly lol
NICE!!!
Ya @racer sold it to me for enough gas money to come to Virginia. He said window cleaning is where the real money is at.
You just come on up to Tidewater and Mr. Sparkle will do everything he can to help you succeed. There’s plenty of business here to be had. The key is to get folks to call us when they’re ready to clean instead of some other schmuck. Here’s what I’ve learned in one year of business: 1) the harder I work, the luckier I get. When I went to retrieve my $4071 check yesterday for that colossal window job from last month, the builder booked me to return to pressure wash this palace next week. This is my third job from this builder. BTW, there ain’t no haggle or estimate necessary for the PW. He knows my character and likes the way I conduct my affairs. He never even asked for a price on the PWing of that mansion because he knows I’ll be fair… 2) The MORE I work, the smarter I get. If I depended on this forum for my education without field experience I would only know about 2/3rds of what I use every day to be the best at what I do. 3) As long as I place my customer’s happiness at the top of my priorities,I will ultimately win consistently. Yesterday I had a difficult job that required doing the outside windows over again (windy, cold, inexperienced team member on the water fed pole and SH and water blown everywhere, dirty chimney almost impossible to clean (I DID say almost)
After we went back and fixed the windows, the customer called me back several hours later and insisted that we return to rinse the white residue (SH) off his deck and put the one screen that we failed to replace back in it’s window… NOW, I’ve already been paid. The customer is being ridiculous, because he wasn’t even willing to put that screen in the window for me after I did quite a bit extra for him than I was paid to do. Nonetheless, his happiness is my ul;timate goal. After all, I’m in the happiness business. I apologized for the mistakes and thanked him for giving me another opportunity to serve. Will this attitude pay off with this customer? Will I get the opportunity to clean his water front home nearby in the future? Maybe, and maybe not. But by being consitent in my motivation to place the happiness of my customers first, I will always do my best. At the end of the day, doing my best is enough.
Like when you harness up to get one dirt dauber off of a third story gable. Customer for life.
Or those second story details.
VERY well said Sir!
Great work man
Question, is your ladder backwards in that photo?
