After working in the drain cleaning business for 17 years, Thomas Bowden knew what he liked and didn’t like in service trucks. So when he founded Drain Doctor Plumbers Inc. in Umatilla, Fla., in 2003, he kept his eyes open for the right vehicle.
He started out with a Ford extended van, knowing that soon he would want something with a longer, wider, taller cargo space. One day he saw a FedEx delivery van that looked ideal and followed it until it stopped so that he could read the nameplate: Freightliner. He went to a nearby Freightliner dealer and placed an order.
It turned out the van was built by Mercedes-Benz in Europe and imported under the Freightliner and Dodge names. Because of a delay in shipment, Bowden ended up taking a Dodge Sprinter van with very similar specifications.
The vehicle served him well for four years, and last July he replaced it with a 2007 Dodge Sprinter 2500 extended van, 18 inches longer than the previous one. Bowden likes its clean appearance, its ample carrying space, its comfortable headroom, and the overall efficiency it brings to his work.
Efficiency counts
Productivity is important to Bowden, who has a one-man oper-ation but subcontracts some work and hopes to grow enough to hire permanent help soon. The van has a 3.5-liter V6 Mercedes-Benz turbo- charged diesel engine. The side-opening door is 51 inches wide, and the back doors open 260 degrees.
The van’s configuration enabled Bowden to devise what for him is an ideal layout. Because the 9-foot-high roof would make it hard to reach roof-mounted ladders, Bowden hung a slide-in ladder rack from the ceiling. With its 170-inch wheelbase, the van can accommodate a 12-foot-long extension ladder. Bowden also mounted pipe hangers on the ceiling that hold pipes up to 14 feet long.
“I lost a little headroom, but I can still stand up in the truck,” he says. “And the vehicle just looks cleaner without the exterior racks.”
The extra length of the cargo space allowed Bowden to install enough lockable box bins on the wall opposite the side door to hold all his power tools and a SeeSnake camera and NaviTrack locator, both from RIDGID.
Lockable shelf bins hold hand tools and copper, CPVC and PEX fittings. Plastic wall bins hold the rest of the plumbing stock. All told, the truck carries some $3,000 in parts inventory, including faucets, garbage disposals, and a sump pump. “I was able to spread out my stock and tools on a longer wall, which means I don’t have it in the middle of the floor, where I would have to crawl over it,” Bowden says.
The rear of the van holds three Duracable drain and pipe cleaning machines and extra cable reels. A boom-type winch makes it easy to load and unload even the largest of the three machines.
Cost-effective travel
Bowden’s original Sprinter van got 20 mpg; the 2007 model gets 18 mpg. Either way, that’s a significant savings — especially at today’s fuel prices — over the company’s first van, which got 10 to 11 mpg. In fact, says Bowden, the monthly fuel savings offset the higher payments for the Sprinter vehicle.
Making things even more efficient, the van carries a laptop computer that tracks inventory and enables Bowden to prepare invoices and pay bills online using QuickBooks accounting software while in the field. At the end of the workday, Bowden copies the QuickBooks file to a flash drive and uploads it to his office computer.
The new van has made operations highly efficient for Drain Doctor Plumbers and provides a comfortable work environment. “Once you have worked out of a Sprinter,” says Bowden, “you can’t go back to a traditional van.”
