Tag: white van man

£3000 of Tools Stolen From Van in 4 Minutes

Posted on by News Desk

A self employed white van man was going about his normal day to day routine, which meant nipping to the shop. He was gone for only 4 minutes, and then…

The van owner couldn’t quite believe his eyes as he casually walked back from the shop…the place where he had parked his van, well, something didn’t seem quite right, and on further inspection he realised his rear doors were wide open.

How could this be, was it those magic keys that we have been hearing about recently? While that was what many people would no doubt have thought, it was actually a lot more skilled on the thieves part.

They were quick to strike, and before anyone could stop them all of the tools were transferred from the van and into a blue Vauxhall Vectra getaway car, and without any feeling of guilt at all…they sped off.

Looking back at the CCTV footage of the incident, Police confirmed that this particular van thief drilled holes into the rear doors in order to gain entry, and as mentioned before, it only took 4 minutes.

Unfortunately for the white van man it was £3000 worth of tools that went that day. It took him years to acquire those tools, and now with them stolen it could very well mean he can no longer trade.

If only his van insurance had covered tool theft, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, but of course, it’s easy to play Monday morning quarter back, so to speak.

The fact of the matter is that his tools were stolen and he wasn’t insured, but hopefully this can serve as a lesson to all van drivers around the UK. Make sure your tools are insured.

A lot of white van men think it is expensive to insure all of your tools, especially when we are talking about thousands of pounds worth here. In normal circumstances it is, but not when you visit the nations favourite van insurance comparison website.

Here at Cheap Van Insurance you can instantly get quotes from over 40 van insurance companies, and then see which is the cheapest for insuring your tools. You will typically get up to £5000 worth of cover, which is more than enough for most tradespeople.

Back to the story, and at the time of writing the Police still haven’t come up with any leads or suspects despite having some good CCTV footage to look at. The van thieves were wearing masks you see, so it might be difficult to come up with anything.

That hasn’t stopped the general public from trying though, as the story has been shared over 7000 times on Facebook. Will people power win the day and the thieves get caught? Even if this does happen, something tells me the tools won’t be with them.

Summer of Rage, White Van Men Unleashed

Posted on by News Desk

Is the so called “white van man” out of control? My opinion has always been no, but recent reports might just suggest otherwise.

In fact, you might just want to call this the “summer of rage” when it comes to van drivers on UK roads, which really isn’t the kind of thing we want to be hearing about.

Take one van driver in Southsea, who got caught on camera spitting at a motorist while involved in a heated argument in a car park. After that, he proceeded to rip the door off the car while a terrified woman was still inside. “Just move the car” he could be heard shouting, so obviously he wanted the car to get out of the way.

If you thought that would be the end of this particular summer of rage then think again, because there are more stories involving white van men around the UK.

Take the moment a camera caught a van driver knocking down a cyclist as an example, and then instead of going back to see if the cyclist was okay, the driver went into a rage and blamed him for the accident and for hitting his wing mirror.

Now you might be thinking that the cyclist could have been to blame and the van driver had every right to get hot under the collar…until the video footage clearly shows the van was on the wrong side of the road.

No wonder the van driver was angry, his van insurance was no doubt about to get a lot more expensive, but there really is no excuse for this kind of behaviour.

Unfortunately, the summer of rage just seems to be getting even more extreme, with reports just in of a white van man who unleashed a karate kick on a man who tried to stop him from leaving a work site.

Who knows exactly what went on here, but there really is no excuse for showing off your karate skills unless it’s in self defence

Anyway, the incident was caught on camera in West Yorkshire and it appears the man who was initially attacked then went on to punch the van before it sped off.

So it looks like members of the public are now fighting back against the van drivers in this summer of rage. Maybe everybody just needs to cool off a bit.

One way van drivers can do that is by visiting a van insurance comparison site and getting some cheap quotes.

Someone who might just have done that is one white van man who tried to give his number to a woman while driving at 70mph down the motorway.

He was probably so happy at getting cheap van insurance that he thought it was time to try a bit of speed dating, although it didn’t seem to work as the woman wasn’t interested.

Finding cheap van insurance soon to be least of our problems

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 4 APRIL 2014:

Everyone knows how hard it is to find cheap van insurance nowadays, but if the rumours are true it looks like that’s going to be the least of our problems soon!

In fact, I know this is going to sound absolutely mad but I swear I’m not trying to take the piss out of you: there are new fears amongst car insurance and van insurance providers that the development of driverless vehicles is going to completely destroy the insurance industry. That’s right, that new self-driving Google or GM-powered car is going to bankrupt insurance providers, based on, well, pure speculation really.

Insurers are declaring the sky is falling because regions in the UK like Milton Keynes are setting aside specialised roadways for testing driverless vehicles in the coming years. Apparently this is just the first domino to fall that will spell the end of motorists driving their own cars, as far as insurers are concerned – and this means human error will be taken out of the picture when it comes to calculating insurance premiums. No more will it matter if you’re a certain age or live in a particular postcode, as you won’t be doing the driving any more – and this apparently fills insurers with terrible fear that they’ll go out of business for lack of funds.

This is of course incredibly stupid. The idea that driverless cars are going to completely replace vehicles that require human interaction – and that it will happen overnight – is daft. You’re telling me the white van man is going to be replaced by a robotic lorry driver? Pull the other one!

Meanwhile, if you’re in the business of landscaping and you’ve already got a large van with a trailer that you motor about to different homes in order to trim the verge and cut the lawn, you might be shaking your head at this bit of unrelated news: a new EU ruling could end up making you responsible for keeping motor insurance on any ride-on mowers you might have.

This isn’t just limited to commercial landscapers and gardeners, either – apparently anyone who owns a ride-on mower to keep their garden looking nicely trimmed could have to take out a policy as well, even if the bloody thing never even does anything but barely kisses the pavement as you back it into your garage or garden shed. All because of a court case going on in Luxembourg right now involving some daft bastard who was driving his ride-on mower on a motorway and who ended up in an accident. Lucky us, eh?

White Van Man, like common sense, an endangered species

Posted on by News Desk

Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 4 nov  2012:

Just when you thought it was safe to get behind the wheel: this week, the news cycle has been filled with some rather silly points made about van drivers.

One initial report, published just a few days ago, has sounded the alarm that we’ve a new endangered species here in the UK: The White Van Man. A new survey found that out of those under the age of 30 that are entering a trade, only four per cent of them are in need of a van.

The commercial van insurance provider that conducted the poll discovered that this simply wasn’t true across all age ranges. In fact, anyone over the age of 40 that was planning on changing careers has an 80 per cent chance to be going into a position that requires a van, the insurer found.

What’s behind the demise of young Brits getting behind the wheel of big white vans?  Well, nearly one out of every three said that if it wasn’t increases to the price of a litre of petrol, it was rampant insurance and road tax hikes as well driving them into the arms of jobs that didn’t require them sitting in traffic for hours and breathing exhaust fumes; meanwhile 25 per cent of younger drivers said they had no desire to be lumped in with the rest of the White Van Men due to their horrid reputations.

Believe it or not, there may be a bit of truth to the whole ‘horrid driver’ stereotype when it comes to those who drive a van for a living. The research conducted by the car insurance provider found that around 15 per cent of van drivers surveyed had driving offences.

While that’s not a terribly high figure, the next one will definitely blow your mind: around one out of every five van drivers reported actually having sex in their vehicle! Hopefully this wasn’t on the clock – and even more hopefully this wasn’t while the van was in motion, though it would explain some of the poor driving people always complain about, wouldn’t it?

 

‘White Van Man’ not as accurate a title as it used to be

Posted on by News Desk

Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 21 oct 2012:

Move over, lads – new research results this week revealed that there’s more women behind the wheels of vans than you might have thought at first.

According to one car insurance provider’s recent survey, as many as one out of every three van drivers using their vehicles in the course of a business were female. Not only that, but AXA Business Insurance, which provides commercial van insurance to its customers, found that around 14 per cent of these women found it insulting to be referred to as ‘the White Van Man.’

Nearly three out of every four of these women said that the stereotypes associated with the White Van Man appellation were more or less accurate, while almost one out of every three actually found it amusing. Female van drivers seem to have a better sense of humour than their male counterparts, as only 29 per cent of men who drive vans for a living were amused by the nickname.

Most van drivers, whether they be men or women, were found to be overall quite responsible drivers. Almost 70 per cent reported not being convicted of a traffic offence with in the last decade, even though more than half of them spent 10 hours out of every week behind the wheel and 15 per cent spending in excess of 30 hours a week driving.

Women were actually found to be slightly more cautious than men when it came to avoiding traffic citations throughout the past ten years. In fact, men reported being offence-free 67 per cent of the time, while women said that they had not been cited for an offence 73 per cent of the time, a difference of 6 percentage points.

AXA Bisuness Insurance’s managing director,Darrell Sansom, commented on the findings, indicating that the last ten years have left van drivers with a pretty sour reputation. However, Mr Sansom pointed out how far off the mark these stereotypes have become over these intervening years, pointing out that not only has professionalism undergone a steep rise amongst the courier vehicle and delivery van community but that an increasing number of women are driving vans for a living as well.

45% of UK drivers name white van men as most aggravating

Posted on by News Desk

According to a new survey, almost half of all drivers in the UK say that white van men are the absolute worst when it comes to aggravating drivers.

The poll, which surveyed 2,300 drivers, saw 45 per cent of respondents indicating that they were most annoyed by white van men. The second runner-up for most aggravating went to Mums making the school run in their 4x4s, proving that perhaps stereotypes have more than a touch of the truth in them.

However, most white van men refute the stereotype of the angry, inconsiderate driver, according to an independent study conducted by Tesco Bank’s van insurance division. 7 out of every ten van drivers reported never got into altercations such as shouting matches with other road users, while nearly three out of every four indicated that the appearance of their van was important to them, taking pains to keep the vehicles free of scratches and dents.

Tesco Bank’s managing insurance director, Julie Hopes, implied that the kinder, gentler white van drivers may be due to an increased number of women getting behind the wheel in order run their own business. The stereotype should be put to bed, Ms Hopes added, stating that it truly has been dispelled by the commercial van insurance provider’s research.

Some of the other cars found to be the most annoying were the more expensive ones. The survey found that 27 per cent of respondents held rancor in their hearts towards BMWs, while Range Rovers – and their owners – garnered an impressive 19 per cent of the hate as well.

Watch your manners: white van men voted most rude at wheel

Posted on by News Desk

All you van drivers out there better begin watching your manners, as a new survey has found that white van men were voted as the most rude when behind the wheel.

The survey recently found that white van men beat out every other driver on the road when it came to being belligerent buggers behind the wheel, even when it came to those who drove Saabs, Mercedes, Land Rovers, Range Rovers, or Porches.  At the other end of the spectrum, the most polite and courteous people on the road tended to drive Fords, while owners of Peugeots, Vauxhalls, Citroens, and Audis were also found to be much less likely to tailgate or to turn without indicating.

The study, which was commissioned by a major car insurance comparison website that also offers van insurance, found that whether it was refusing to indicate properly, speeding through changing traffic lights, or not letting people out at junctions, drivers notice this kind of dastardly behaviour.  The website’s insurance expert, Peter Harrison, said that most drivers associate motoring habits – both good and bad – with different makes of vehicle, so that if you drive one of the vehicles on the naughty list, you should go out of your way to not be such a rude bugger.

2,500 motorists were surveyed in the study, discovering that 75 per cent of white van drivers actually admitted to never indicating their turns.  The next-rudest car owners were actually much more polite, at only around 25 per cent for BMW owners and 20 per cent for people who drove a Lexus doing the same.

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