Crew Cab Van Finance

What is a crew cab van?

A crew cab van has a second row of seats behind the driver, so it carries a team and a load in the same vehicle. There are two common shapes. A crew van is a panel van with the bulkhead moved back to make room for extra seats. A crew cab tipper or dropside is a chassis cab with a six or seven seat cab and a tipping body behind it. Both trade load space for seats, so the payload figure is the thing to check before you commit to anything.

Two vehicles, one name

The phrase covers two quite different things, and it is worth being clear which one you are after before you start looking.

A crew van, sometimes called a double cab-in-van or a kombi, is a standard panel van with a row of seats added behind the driver and the bulkhead moved back to suit. You end up with five or six seats and a shorter load area. The Ford Transit Custom Double Cab-in-Van, the Vauxhall Vivaro Doublecab, the Volkswagen Transporter Kombi and the Renault Trafic Crew are all this shape.

A crew cab tipper is a different animal. It starts as a chassis cab rather than a panel van, so instead of a load area behind the seats there is an open tipping or dropside body. Six or seven seats up front, a proper tipping body behind. Ford Transit, Mercedes Sprinter and Iveco Daily chassis are the common base vehicles.

If what you actually want is a double cab pickup, a Hilux or a Ranger with a back seat and a load bed, that is a different vehicle again and our pickup truck finance page covers it properly.

What you give up

Nobody sells a crew cab on the basis of what you lose, so here it is.

On a crew van, the bulkhead moves back by roughly the depth of a seat row, which takes a meaningful bite out of load length. If you currently carry eight by four sheets or three metre lengths flat, measure before you order, because a crew van of the same model and wheelbase may no longer take them.

On both shapes, the seats and the extra trim add weight, and every kilo of that comes straight off your payload. The vehicle still has the same gross weight limit, it just has more of its own weight to carry before you put anything in it.

The payload question

This is the part that catches people out, and it is worth doing the arithmetic before you sign anything rather than after.

A crew cab tipper at 3.5 tonnes has already spent a lot of its weight allowance on the crew cab and the body before you load it. Then you put a crew in it. Six people is comfortably half a tonne, and that comes out of the same allowance as the spoil in the back.

The result is that a fully crewed 3.5 tonne tipper can be close to its limit with a surprisingly modest load on board. Plenty of operators find out the hard way at a weighbridge. Check the payload figure for the specific vehicle and specification you are looking at, work out what it leaves you after the crew are in it, and be honest about what you actually carry.

If the sums do not work, the usual answer is to go up in weight rather than to hope. Which brings its own consideration.

Licences above 3.5 tonnes

A standard category B car licence covers you up to 3,500kg. Above that you need category C1, which covers 3,500kg to 7,500kg.

The catch is who already has C1. If you passed your car test before 1 January 1997 you have C1 on your licence through grandfather rights. If you passed after that date you do not, and you will need to take a separate C1 test to drive one.

That matters more for a crew cab than it does for a van, because the whole point is that several different people can drive it and get the team to site. Worth checking what your drivers actually hold before you buy something only one of them can legally move.

Factory built or converted

Crew cabs come both ways. Some are built as crew cabs by the manufacturer with the seats, the side windows, the trim and the type approval all designed in. Others are standard vans and chassis converted afterwards by a specialist.

Good conversions are good. But a factory built crew cab is usually the simpler proposition, because everything about it is standard, documented and easy to value. If you are looking at a converted vehicle, especially a used one, find out who did the conversion and what paperwork comes with it.

Which trades buy them

Crew cabs make sense wherever the job needs more hands than one van can legally carry, and where taking two vehicles to the same site is just paying twice for the same journey.

Groundworkers and landscapers are the biggest users of crew cab tippers, because the muck and the gang are going to the same place. Scaffolders and building firms run them for the same reason. Tree surgeons often have one towing the chipper.

On the crew van side it tends to be maintenance teams, fit-out contractors, highways and utilities work, and anyone whose crew and kit need to arrive together under cover.

Funding a crew cab

Crew vans and crew cab tippers are funded the same way as any other commercial vehicle. Hire purchase is the most common route, with the vehicle belonging to your business at the end of the agreement, no mileage limits and no condition inspection. Lease purchase works where you want the monthly figure lower and are happy to plan for a larger final payment. Finance lease and asset refinance are both available where they suit.

We arrange funding on new vehicles and on used commercial vehicles alike, and we are not tied to any one dealer or supplier, so buy the vehicle wherever you find it.

New businesses are welcome, and so are businesses whose credit history is not perfect. A decline somewhere else is not the end of it, and our bad credit van finance page covers how that works.

It is worth telling us at the outset whether the vehicle is a factory crew cab or a conversion, and whether you are buying from a dealer or privately, because both affect how the deal is put together.