Print is one of the few trades where the raw material is heavier than the finished product feels. A pallet of paper, a run of finished brochures or a delivery of board stock is dense, unforgiving of damp and completely ruined by a bent corner. Print shops and design studios collecting from a paper merchant or a trade printer need a vehicle for the morning rather than a courier. Booking van hire in Warrington handles it, and collecting bulk print and paper is a job where weight bites long before space does.
Paper Reaches A Weight Limit Before It Fills A Van
This is the single fact that governs the whole job. Reams and boards are dense, and a modest looking stack of paper is far heavier than an equivalent volume of almost anything else you might put in a van. Every vehicle we hire sits at or under three and a half tonnes gross vehicle weight, and that figure includes the vehicle, the fuel and everyone in the cab, not just the load. A full pallet of paper can take a meaningful share of what is left. The practical answer is to ask the merchant what a given pallet or quantity actually weighs rather than judging by its size, and to plan two trips where the numbers say so. An overloaded van handles badly, is illegal and is hard on the vehicle, and none of that is worth saving a second journey.
Choosing A Van For Weight Rather Than Volume
Because the load is dense and compact, a smaller vehicle is often exactly right. A short wheelbase low roof van takes a substantial quantity of paper, parks outside a town centre studio and gets under the height barriers at trade counters and business park service yards. Where the load includes large format board, roll media or display stock alongside the paper, the extra floor length of an extra long wheelbase van lets oversized sheets lie flat rather than being stood on edge or bent, which is the difference between usable stock and scrap.
Keeping Stock Flat, Dry And Square
Paper is destroyed by three things and all of them happen in transit. Damp causes cockling and ruins a run before it is printed, so nothing travels uncovered and nothing sits on a wet deck. Bent corners on board and finished print cannot be undone, so stacks go flat with nothing on top of them and nothing hard underneath. Movement causes scuffing between sheets, so the load is strapped tight rather than left to slide. Keep reams in their wrapping until they are needed, since the wrapper is a moisture barrier as much as packaging. Finished print in boxes should be stacked squarely rather than in a pyramid that leans.
Collecting From A Trade Printer Or Merchant
Trade counters work in pallets and expect a forklift to be involved, which is fine at their end and frequently impossible at yours. Establish before you arrive whether the pallet is coming with you or whether stock is being broken down and hand loaded, because that changes the vehicle, the number of people and the time it takes. Give the order number in advance so it is picked and waiting. Check the job against the docket before you leave, particularly on finished print, since a mis-trimmed or wrongly folded run is far easier to raise at the counter than after it has been in a van and a studio. Take a photograph of the stack before it moves.
Delivery Runs And Meeting A Client Deadline
The other half of this trade is getting finished work out, and print deadlines are absolute in a way that few others are. An exhibition graphic that arrives the day after the show is worthless. Build the delivery round so the tightest deadline is the first drop rather than the most convenient one, and allow for the fact that a client’s loading access is rarely as good as they said it was. Where a job is going to a venue or a show, our advice on exhibitions and trade shows van rental covers the arrival side of it.
Fitting Collections Around Trade Counter Hours
Merchants and trade printers keep their own hours and most finish earlier on a Saturday than a retailer would. We are open Monday to Saturday from 8am to 4pm and closed on Sunday, so an early collection leaves the whole day for the run. Studios with a regular pattern of collections and deliveries often find one longer hire across a busy week simpler than booking repeatedly, and short and long term hire are both available with no deposit required on most vehicles. There is free secure parking on site, and studios around Westbrook van hire and Woolston van hire are minutes from the depot.
Taking Waste Paper And Offcuts Away
Print generates waste in volume and most of it is worth separating rather than binning. Clean offcuts and misprints are straightforwardly recyclable and a waste paper merchant will take quantity, while anything carrying customer data or unreleased artwork needs a confidential destruction route rather than a skip. Keep the two streams apart from the point the sheet leaves the guillotine, because separating them afterwards never happens. Board, plastic laminate and printed vinyl go different ways again and should not be mixed into a paper load. For a studio without much storage, a vehicle available for a morning turns a corner stacked with bundles back into usable floor space, and it is worth doing on a regular cycle rather than waiting until it becomes a fire risk.
Tell us what weight of stock you are collecting and whether it is palletised, and we will tell you honestly whether that is one trip or two. Call the depot on 01925 396 222 before you place the order.
