Connor's DIY Plywood-Shelved Electrician's Van

Headroom With a Ceiling Shelf

With most high roof vans the space is used for standing space! Not on this van. It has a full length shelf built in along the length of the ceiling to store ladders and long lengths of material.

Storing all tools in your van is common in urban parts of the UK where theft rates are very high! While the ladders stored inside the van make it impossible to stand, that probably isn't as important in an electrician's van. They carry much lower levels of inventory compared to plumbers, HVAC techs, or remodelers.

Another benefit to ladders and materials inside is the easy access and not needing to install or deal with a roof rack.

Plywood Interior

Connor used plywood extensively to upfit the van. He built several plywood shelf units and a couple of drawer units.

Some of the sensitive parts of the vans interior are skinned out with light plywood. The rest is protected by the plywood shelving that takes up most of the rest of the van's interior.

Up against the bulkhead Connor uses Makita organizer boxes to store his Makita power tools. The plywood shelves for these are sized for each tool box, leaving enough room to comfortably grab the tool box and take it off the shelf.

These tool boxes can be stacked and locked together on his Makita hand truck for easy transport onto the jobsite.

The Long Drawers

Below the Makita shelves are a couple of long drawers that pull out through the side cargo door of the van. Long drawers are becoming more common and there are a lot of commercial options for steel, aluminum, and stainless steel versions. However, plywood is a very cheap way to test whether this fits in with your work method.

While he hasn't fully integrated the long drawers into his workflow yet, he plans to use these for inventory.

On that note, Connor says he doesn't carry a lot of inventory. He tends to check out a job, then go to a supply house to pick up what he needs.

Led Lights

Since his full length ceiling shelf blocks the factory lights, Connor attached some cheap LED lights to the underside of the ceiling shelf. They are wired into the stock van lights in the cargo area, so they work with the stock lights.

A Compact Spool

One neat product he has is a spool of sleeving with 3 different sizes of sleeve. This spool size is the same whether it has one type of sleeve or three, so he can more easily bring the single spool on the jobsite and have what he needs. If he was hurting for space, he could also carry just the one spool in the van.

While this isn't necessarily available to everyone, you might consider spooling something in a similar way yourself if you thought it could save you some time and space on a job. It wouldn't be hard to figure out a DIY spooling setup with a drill if you wanted to try it out.