We Replaced 40 Service Vans with Ford Mavericks and Saved Thousands

We swapped 40 Ford Mavericks into our home service fleet — and the results changed the way we think about fleet management.

Most home service companies are overspending on vehicles without realizing it. A new service van can cost $50,000–$60,000 today. A Ford Maverick? Around $27,000. We now run 40 Mavericks inside a 120+ vehicle fleet — and we’ve lowered overhead, reduced accidents, improved fuel economy, and still get the job done without sacrificing operational efficiency.

In this episode, we break down:

→ Why the “you can’t run service out of a small truck” argument is outdated
→ How we use Packout systems and standardized inventory kits to maximize space
→ The sales-to-install model that makes smaller vehicles work at scale
→ The real numbers behind fleet costs, efficiency, and utilization
→ Why two Mavericks can outperform one traditional service van

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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up everybody? This is one of our Ford Mavericks. We did a video about a month or two ago where we talked about exchanging a ton of our fleet for Ford Mavericks. We have got around 120, 130 vehicles in our fleet, and I think 40 of them are Mavericks. And we basically stopped buying vans and we've moved as many people over to our Mavericks as possible. So we're gonna dive in today. A lot of the questions that we got initially, you know, why the Maverick, what makes it good, what makes it not? So we're just gonna sort of go over the truck, we're gonna open some doors, we're gonna take a look at this. But just starting here, it's a small truck, which is a a pretty good portion of the reason that we like it. But it limits our truck stock, which we like, helps us keep costs down. It's smaller, so we get in way less accidents, we hit way less stuff, we don't back into stuff because they're smaller and easier to drive around, and they cost less money. Like a van these days is $50,000 to $60,000, and these things are like $27,000. So it's a huge savings. There's less truck stock and we get in less accidents. So those are all big wins. So if we look in here, we're basically this is one of our plumbing service trucks. So we're basically able to keep most of our plumbing service materials in the back along with our tools and in the back of the truck because there's a whole second seat. So in here we have truck stock, we have consumables like screws, we have buckets for each of the tools. This is one of our technicians' trucks. We have screws, we have hose. If we need to, we can put a water heater, we can put in a toilet, we could do whatever we need by just removing the top. Now, this is just with a tonneau cover, which is these things here, and they just attach to the top, but you can also put caps on them, which we have caps on some of our Ford Rangers, some of our Toyotas. The caps add another two feet because it basically goes to the top of the cab and it allows you to get even more stuff in. I mean, we've seen some people do full HVAC installs out of the back of these trucks. You can haul something, but you can't haul a lot, but there is a hitch on the bottom. So you can haul uh some small trailers, some jetters. The trucks themselves are pretty big on the inside. So, what we've done with some of them is we've fully removed the back seats, and that's allowed us to put in shelving, it's allowed us to store tools, have more inventory. What we found with some of our Chevy Express vans is most of the van never even gets used at all. It's just sort of like shelf space, and you can accomplish roughly the same amount of storage in a much smaller and much cheaper vehicle. One of the biggest points of feedback that we got with comments and just people reaching back out was hey, you really can't run a service truck out of these things, they're just too small. My feedback on that is you basically can, but you just need an efficient stock system. So we use these uh packout kits and we use them like crazy. In plumbing, we use them a little bit less. But what we found is everybody thinks that they can get everything inside of their van, and that's why they need a van. But what we found is people still run to the supply house or Home Depot or whatever roughly the same amount in a van as they did in a truck. So if you can build your stock system into packouts, or you can sell something and have an installer follow-up out of an install truck, then we have found that to basically solve this issue. But a lot of the feedback was oh, you could never do that, you'll never have enough parts, you'll never have whatever. You can fit most of what you can fit inside a van inside this truck using packout kits, or just sell it and have an installer follow-up. And that's part of what makes this work is our sales to install system, which if you don't have a good system, sure, it might not work for you. I think the industry got used to one model 15, 20 years ago where we have to do a van. But the reality is I can get two of these for the price of one of these. They're cheaper, they get better gas mileage, I can fit roughly the same amount of stuff inside it. And I think we all just need to learn how to run a better and tighter system so that you can scale your business way more capitally efficient.