Why more tradespeople are choosing a pickup truck over a van — and why it works

Look across any site car park now and the mix has changed. Alongside the vans there's a row of double cab pickups — Rangers, Hiluxes, Amaroks, D-Maxes — and they're not there because somebody fancied one. For plenty of trades the pickup has turned out to be the more useful vehicle: it does the work properly all week, and it's still something you'd choose to drive on a Sunday.

The honest trade-off is bed space, and no amount of enthusiasm changes that. What it means in practice is that how the bed is laid out matters far more in a pickup than it does in a van.

What's actually driving the switch

The appeal is versatility and it's a real one. Five seats means two lads to site during the week and the family at the weekend without stripping the vehicle out first. Four-wheel drive earns its keep on a wet groundworks site or a farm track in February, on the sort of ground that beaches a front-wheel-drive van. Most double cabs will tow 3.5 tonnes, which puts the plant trailer, the digger or the caravan on the table without a second vehicle.

There's the day-to-day stuff too. A telehandler can drop a tonne bag or a pallet of blocks straight over the side, which you'll never do into a panel van, and you can hose the bed out after a filthy week.

One thing worth checking rather than assuming: the tax treatment of double cab pickups has shifted in recent years and it isn't the straightforward win it used to be. Worth having your accountant run it against your own setup before you commit.

The bed is the trade-off — and it's smaller than it looks

A double cab bed runs to around 1.5 metres. Full sheets and 3 metre lengths aren't going in flat, and there's no standing height at all, so anything that genuinely depends on volume still points to a van.

For most trades, though, volume isn't the constraint — access is. A van gives you plenty of cubic metres and a fair share of it ends up as air above a pile of kit nobody can reach. A pickup bed laid out properly holds more of what you actually use in a day than people expect, because none of the space gets wasted.

The failure mode is treating the bed as a skip. Loose kit slides the full length of it every time you brake, sits in the wet, and takes the finish off the liner. Everything needs fixing down and compartmenting — more rigorously than in a van, not less.

Off-the-shelf or bespoke — both work

There are two routes and we see plenty of both.

The simpler one is a drawer unit under a false deck: one full-width drawer or a pair on load-rated runners, with a flat deck over the top you can still stack materials on. Quick to fit, cheaper, and for a lot of trades it's genuinely all that's needed.

The bespoke route makes sense when the kit is specific. Drawers sized around your case system, dividers set out for your fixings and consumables, a lockable compartment for the expensive gear, a slide-out tray so you're not climbing into the bed to reach the bulkhead end, and side lockers in the dead space over the arches. We're fitting out more pickups now than we ever have, and it's the bespoke builds where the gains are biggest — the difference between a bed that carries your kit and one that carries all of it.

Sort the lid and the fixings first

Whatever goes in the back, decide the cover before the layout. An open bed is weather and an invitation. A hardtop canopy buys you height and dry storage; a roller shutter keeps the bed open for tall loads and locks flush when it's down.

Then fix the unit to the bed's own mounting points and lock the drawers. An unsecured drawer unit is just a heavy thing sliding about behind you, and it's the one thing that turns a good setup into a liability.

Set the bed up around what you carry

A pickup gives up some space and hands you a lot back. The trick is making every millimetre of the bed count, which is exactly what a proper fit-out does. Take a look at our racking and storage systems to see how drawer units, dividers and secure storage go together, or book a free design consultation and we'll design a bed layout around your truck and your trade.