Hire a Van and Driver

Which rate you actually want

Most enquiries arrive as “how much to hire a van and driver”, and the honest answer is that it depends on whether you need a second pair of hands. That is the whole decision.

• One driver, priced by the mile. A sofa, a bed, a fridge, a mattress, a bike, a marketplace buy, a click-and-collect from IKEA, a pallet of stock. One item or a small handful, ground floor or a lift, nothing that needs two people to lift it. £55 within the M25, or £95 minimum and £1.90 a loaded mile beyond it.
• Van and two movers, by the hour. A studio or one-bed move, an end-of-tenancy clear-out, a third-floor walk-up, a wardrobe that has to come apart, an office reshuffle. Anything where the loading is the job rather than the driving. £89 an hour, 2-hour minimum.
• Both at once. A single heavy item with stairs at one end is still the per-mile price, plus £45 for the second person. That is usually cheaper than buying two hours of crew.
• Two items, one pickup. A second thing from the same collection address going to the same delivery address adds £25, not a second job price.

If you are not sure, send a photo and both postcodes. We will tell you which of the two comes out lower for your job rather than quoting you the bigger one. It costs us nothing to be straight about it, and a job priced wrong turns into an argument on the pavement, which costs everyone.

Van and driver versus self-drive van hire

A self-drive daily rate looks cheap on the depot's homepage because of what sits outside it. Before you compare it with anything on this page, count these:

• Fuel. You return it full. On a cross-London round trip in a Luton that is not a rounding error, and on a 200-mile run it is a large part of the difference.
• The insurance excess. The standard excess on a hire van is normally a four-figure number, and the daily waiver that reduces it is an extra. A scuffed wing mirror is your problem either way.
• Charges. The Congestion Charge and, if the van is older, ULEZ. Our vans are ULEZ-compliant and we pass the Congestion Charge through at £18 only where it actually applies.
• The depot. Two trips, two sets of paperwork, a walk-round inspection at each end, and it has to be back before they shut.
• The lifting. A hire van comes with nobody in it. You are still carrying the wardrobe, and so are the two friends you had to bribe.

Self-drive genuinely wins in one case: you need a van for several days of your own errands and the load is light enough for one person. For a single job with real furniture in it, a van with a driver in it is normally the cheaper way round once the list above is added up — and it is certainly the faster one, because it happens today rather than on the day the depot has a van free.

The hourly rate, the minimum and the day blocks

The hourly service is £89 an hour for a van and two movers, with a 2-hour minimum. There is no one-mover hourly tier — every hourly booking runs a two-person crew, because a single mover on a staircase is how furniture and plaster get damaged.

The clock starts when we arrive at the collection address and stops when the last item is where you want it. Driving between the two addresses is inside the hour, not on top of it. There is no separate stair charge and no charge for trolleys, straps, blankets or floor protection — those come with the van.

Past four hours it is cheaper to buy a block. A half day is £340 for four hours and a full day is £640 for eight, both all-in with two movers. Between the two we charge the half day plus £89 an hour for the extra time, and never more than the full day — so a job that overruns cannot cost you more than the day rate.

A realistic guide: a studio inside London is usually a half day; a one-bed with a lift is a half day if you are packed and a full day if you are not; a two-bed walk-up is a full day. Being packed before we arrive is the single biggest thing you control. Boxes sealed and stacked by the door can take an hour off the bill. A whole van load going up the country is a day rate rather than an hourly meter on the motorway — £450 to the Midlands, £600 to the North, with two movers.

The one-driver rate, and when it is the better buy

Courier and single-item work is driven as a dedicated same-day run: one driver, one van, your item and nothing else in the back, collected today. It is not a shared load waiting for a backload driver to happen past your route, which is what most of the cheap headline prices online actually are — ten jobs sharing one set of miles on a multi-day window the driver picks.

• Within the M25 — £55. One item collected and delivered across London, today.
• Outside the M25 — £95 minimum. Covers the first 50 loaded miles: Bucks, Herts, Berks, Surrey and the near Home Counties.
• Beyond 50 miles — £1.90 a loaded mile. Measured collection to delivery, the empty return leg included and no fuel surcharge. London to Oxford is £105, London to Birmingham £238, London to Manchester £380.
• Marketplace collection — £45. A local eBay, Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree buy picked up from the seller.
• Several sellers or a bulk buy — £195. A van load rather than a single item.

Compare that with the hours. Two hours of crew is the minimum hourly spend; a single item within the M25 on the per-mile ladder is £55, and adding a second person to it is £45. For one sofa going three miles, the courier rate wins comfortably. For a flat with fourteen boxes, four hours of two movers moves everything at once and the courier rate does not apply at all. See large item courier, same day delivery and single item moves for the detail.

What actually changes the price

On the hourly rate, mileage matters far less than people expect. On the courier rate the loaded mileage is the price, and everything below decides how long the two ends take:

• Stairs and floors. Which floor at each end, and whether the lift works and is big enough for the item. A third-floor walk-up is a different job from a ground floor with parking outside.
• Parking. How close the van can get to the door. A permit street or a suspended bay needs several working days' notice from the council; a 40-metre carry adds time to every trip.
• The item. Weight, whether it comes apart, and whether it fits through the communal door — entrance doors and lift openings are routinely narrower than the flat's own doors, and that is where sofas get stuck.
• Waiting. Free for the first 20 minutes at each end, then £15 per 15 minutes. It is there for the seller who has gone out, not to catch you out.

We match the van to the load rather than sending a Luton to every job — SWB, LWB and Luton, whichever fits. Our van sizes guide walks through which is which. We are based in Uxbridge UB8 and Chalfont St Peter, so west London, Hillingdon, Bucks and the M40/M25 corridor get the fastest slots, and we work seven days from 7am to 10pm. Ask us for the current insurance certificate, cover limits and exclusions before you book.