Your Man With A Van

Your Man With A Van had already spent more than a decade learning how to price, organise and deliver removals before it asked anyone else to run the model. The original Hertford business gave Dan Robson-Scarborough practical experience across smaller item moves, house removals and commercial work. The 2023 franchise pilot tested whether that experience could be taught and applied in other locations. The January 2024 launch followed that test. The strength here is the sequence. A real service came first, then a pilot, then the wider rollout.

Dan and Cat Robson-Scarborough brought different experience to the design. Dan understood the work from the van through to the customer handover. Cat brought experience of managing customer service and retail standards. Together they built an offer around a practical question. How can a local owner run a professional removals business with the support of a national network while keeping control of their day-to-day work?

The fee structure is a clear answer to part of that question. A published entry fee gives a candidate a starting point for budgeting. The fixed monthly charge makes the franchise fee predictable as the branch gets busier. The rolling agreement gives the owner flexibility, while the exclusive territory and local marketing give them a patch in which to build a reputation. A prospective owner can then weigh the vehicle, insurance, labour and marketing costs against the kind of work available in that area.

• Proven and profitable core business · 2.5/5. The years of trading, the reported customer history and the pilot establish that the underlying service worked in practice. The Companies House record verifies the legal entity and its filing history. The profitability of the original operation could not be established from the evidence available for this assessment.
• Ability to operate without daily founder involvement · 2.5/5. Local owners quote, schedule and deliver moves in different parts of the country. The operations manual, branch infrastructure and peer support give owners a way to work through routine decisions. The specific 30-day founder-absence test in the scoring brief remains unverified.
• Ideal franchisee profile · 3/3. The founders look for character, customer judgement and a realistic view of self-employment. The discovery process asks candidates how they have handled difficult situations, how they would manage quieter periods and whether the commitment fits their circumstances. That gives the team something concrete to assess across candidates with very different work histories.
• Franchisee commercial viability · 4/4. Erikas progressed from driver to multi-branch owner. Abass expanded from Enfield to three branches. The Quality Franchise Association profile also features Paul Seymour’s experience of building and passing on a branch. These cases show different ways an owner has been able to build value through the model. The examples describe individual outcomes.
• Market differentiation · 3/3. The combination of local ownership, practical head-office support, no percentage royalty and a monthly rolling agreement gives prospects specific terms they can compare when deciding how to enter or grow in the removals industry.

The operations manual is one of the clearest signs of how Your Man With A Van built the franchise. Cat Robson-Scarborough describes documenting work the founders had done for years and revising the manual when early owners asked questions the original version hadn’t anticipated. That is valuable in removals. An owner needs enough information to handle jobs where access, timing or the items being moved differ from what was expected at the point of quote. The manual improves as franchisees encounter those situations and share what happened.

The training programme gives owners time to learn the service and get the business ready to trade. Dan has described nine setup sessions. The wider package covers removals techniques, customer service, business operations and compliance. At the same time, head office helps get the local branch page, Google Business Profile, phone, email, graphics and booking tools in place. A new owner can spend the setup period learning how to quote and deliver the work while the customer-facing side of the business is being prepared.

The support structure extends beyond the launch. Head office provides account management and technical support, and franchisees share advice and jobs through their own network. Elite Franchise’s profile describes experienced owners helping peers through the branch WhatsApp group and a volunteer group of support branches. The franchisor has also described a case where Dan stepped in directly to help protect a customer’s move. Together, those examples show the range of support available, from everyday questions to a job that needs immediate help.

• Documented operations playbook · 5/5. The franchise director confirms that the network has a manual and explains how actual branch questions inform revisions. That is evidence of operating knowledge being made available to the people using it.
• Structured onboarding and training · 4/4. The nine setup sessions sit within a wider sequence of checks, training, territory setup and systems access. The programme prepares the owner to handle customer work and to administer the business.
• Documented brand experience · 4/4. Standard graphics, customer terms and common branch-page features give the franchise a consistent public face. Local pages carry that through to the customer’s practical questions about coverage, services, quotes and reviews. Branches retain room to explain what matters in their market.
• Central access to tools and resources · 1.5/3. The public offer identifies an owner login, an admin suite with automations and booking tools, alongside graphics, supplier and equipment resources. The material reviewed establishes the package and the core system. It does not establish that all training, templates and the manual are available through the same login.
• Launching with limited founder input · 2/4. The training, manual, account support and peer network give a new owner several ways to solve problems. The founders remain deliberately accessible. The evidence supports a structured launch with wider support, with the degree of routine founder involvement across launches still to be verified.

Your Man With A Van answers the questions a serious franchise candidate needs to ask early. The official page explains the entry fee, the ongoing charge, the agreement, the type of work and the help an owner receives. It gives people coming from employment enough detail to picture a career change and gives existing removals operators enough to judge what the network might add to their business. Named owner experiences and the franchise’s YouTube question-and-answer series make that decision more concrete.

The enquiry starts with a town or postcode and the candidate’s intended timing. That makes the prospectus request a useful first step. It gives the team an area to check and gives the candidate a reason to have a conversation about local demand, their costs and what the work involves. The journey then sets out discovery, checks, training, setup and taking the first jobs. A candidate can see where the decisions sit and what has to be ready before the branch opens.

The launch of the franchise itself is documented as well. The founders trialled the model, built the package around what owners needed, refined the offer and then took it to market. Cat’s account from the early rollout describes the transition from trial locations to recruiting owners with and without industry experience. Later accounts identify search, founder-led content, press and owner referrals as recruitment routes. The Which Franchise listing, QFA profile and a public listing for the November 2026 event at NAEC Stoneleigh show how the team has continued to put the opportunity in front of prospective owners.

• Clear franchise proposition · 5/5. A prospective owner can establish the work, territory, fees, agreement and setup offer from the official page. The proposition gives enough detail for a meaningful comparison with other ways to start a removals business.
• Recruitment messaging for suitable candidates · 4/4. The franchise speaks to career changers, people with driving and transport experience and existing operators. Owner stories, founder Q&As and practical articles show what ownership can look like for each.
• Clear enquiry journey · 4/4. The prospectus, territory conversation, discovery call, setup and first jobs are identifiable stages. The same journey connects candidate recruitment to the practical readiness of the new branch.
• Structured discovery · 4/4. Cat describes discussing expectations, resilience, personal circumstances and how candidates respond to difficult situations. The franchisor also identifies pre-launch background checks. That gives the network a structured way to protect its service standards as it recruits.
• Plan to take the franchise to market · 3/3. The contemporaneous founder account and later history evidence an executed plan from pilot through offer design and wider recruitment. The subsequent use of directories, founder content and events shows that the offer has an established route to market beyond the initial launch.

Your Man With A Van’s progress from 29 branches at the end of its first formal franchise year to more than 70 UK branches shows how much ground the network has covered. The spread is visible in the branch finder, which includes Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, St Albans and towns around the original Hertford market. The branches give the network a presence in different kinds of market and show how it has applied the model outside the area where it started.

Existing owners are an important part of that growth. Abass added branches after starting in Enfield, and Erikas progressed from driving to owning three branches. The Quality Franchise Association profile also identifies Lee Rungano as a multi-branch owner in the Manchester and Trafford area. Growing through owners who already understand the work gives the network a second route to expansion alongside recruiting new franchisees. It also explains why the branch total and the number of individual owners should be treated as separate figures.

The recruitment channels are well evidenced. Cat identifies direct search, press, social content and recommendations from existing owners. Which Franchise, the Quality Franchise Association and Franchise Community give the offer additional points of discovery. Head office brings candidates back to a territory conversation and personal vetting. That selection is part of the value of the model, particularly when new owners will represent the brand directly in customers’ homes and workplaces.

• Consistent monthly franchise enquiries · 2.5/5. The range of active channels and the successive branch milestones show sustained recruitment activity. The public record does not provide a month-by-month enquiry series.
• Enquiry sources and candidate quality · 2/4. The franchise director identifies where prospects come from and describes why owner recommendations tend to produce stronger progression. That establishes useful channel knowledge. Systematic attribution and reporting across the full funnel remain unverified.
• Enquiry-to-franchisee conversion rate · 0/4. There is public commentary on how candidates from different sources progress. The network-wide rate cannot be calculated from the public figures available.
• Territory expansion plan · 1.5/3. The franchisor checks availability by area, considers population density and has set public network growth ambitions. A current list of priority territories, and the order in which they are being developed, remains unverified.
• Recruitment without founder-led conversations throughout · 2/4. The website, directories, prospectus and educational content allow people to find and explore the opportunity independently. Cat’s personal contact with applicants remains an intentional part of candidate selection. The evidence supports shared work at the top of the funnel and founder involvement at discovery.

The Grow result describes how much of the recruitment process the public evidence lets us assess. The branch milestones show expansion. Monthly enquiries, conversion data and territory priorities would show how predictable that expansion is.

Your Man With A Van gives a branch owner a way to reach customers from the start. The managed page is built for a real place, with a named operator, local coverage, services and ways to ask for a quote. The Glasgow page, for example, explains practical issues with tenement moves and includes a local relationship with Patch Property. The Belfast, St Albans and Waltham Forest pages show how the same framework can carry different local details. That combination of consistent structure and useful local information makes the pages more valuable to customers deciding whom to trust with a move.

The local marketing programme continues after setup. The owner starts with a branch page, an optimised Google Business Profile and social channels. The network describes ongoing search support, continued updates to the Google listing and a regular social publishing schedule. Dan’s account of the first months of trading explains how local search, customer reviews and work passed through head office build together. The owner has a practical sequence to follow. Get the local presence ready, respond to enquiries, deliver the work well and use the reputation earned on those jobs to help attract the next customer.

The website gives the network two ways to connect that demand with local capacity. A customer can contact the named branch directly, or head office can pass a central quote request to the appropriate team. Neighbouring operators can also work together. Beyond its own network, Your Man With A Van has described a cross-referral and joint marketing partnership with Sky High Window Cleaning. These are additional ways for a branch to earn work while developing its own relationships.

• Support to generate local customer enquiries · 5/5. Managed pages, Google Business Profiles, search support, social content, quote routing and joint marketing give owners multiple ways to reach customers. There is a clear route from national visibility to the team with the local capacity to deliver.
• Local online presence for franchisees · 4/4. A managed local page is part of standard branch setup. The public branch finder and sampled pages in different UK markets show that provision in use. Those pages combine local knowledge, service information, reviews and direct contact.
• Local marketing plan after launch · 4/4. The setup package, ongoing Google and search work, recurring social activity and published account of the first months establish a repeatable programme. The franchisor handles much of the infrastructure, and owners build their local reputation through the work they do and the reviews it earns.
• Enquiry and performance tracking at branch level · 1.5/3. Central routing, branch quote forms and branch-specific reviews tie customer activity to an individual location. Branch reports showing how many quotes become bookings, the work mix and the commercial return from different channels remain unverified.
• Customer generation beyond the owner’s contacts · 4/4. Abass describes moving from friends-and-family leads to regular enquiries from his established branches. That is a named example of the network’s local visibility and lead generation giving an owner a wider route to customers.