A new survey has revealed the real cleaning habits of van drivers in Britain, with Cambridge having the highest population where van man goes dirty and cleans their vans.

The research does not make pretty reading with:

• 17% of British van drivers admitting to never washing their van at all.
• 67% said that their van is usually cluttered with food and drink wrappers.
• 22% said that they use their spare seats as their rubbish bin.

The worst offenders

When it comes to cleaning vehicles, 62% van drivers who use a van for their business said that they would rather pay someone else to clean it, than do it themselves, according to the survey for Gocompare.com Van Insurance.

The worst areas include:

• Cambridge–an entire half of Cambridge respondents never washed the outside of their van – and nearly 38% never washed the inside either.
• Sheffield – 45% never washed the outside of their van. Though they were more inclined to clean the inside, the majority of the waste they did find there was old pay and display parking tickets.
• Leicester – 33% never gave their vans a hose down. On the other hand, those that did preferred to clean it themselves, with 12.5% favouring doing it at home over taking it to a car wash, the next most-popular option.

The survey also found that a delivery driver was most likely to leave their van messy and unclean, with nearly a third saying that they never gave it a wash over.

Squeaky clean (almost)

London has some of the cleanest vans around – with 38% of business van drivers washing their vans inside and out on a weekly basis. But despite wanting to stay clean and fresh, it wasn’t through any work of their own: 70% admitted they didn’t do the cleaning themselves.

The only two locations cleaner were Belfast – at 44% with weekly full cleans – and Birmingham, with 40%.

With many van drivers using their vehicle for work, it’s interesting to see how attitudes vary when it comes to cleaning their vehicles.

While making time to clean your van is unlikely to be at the top of anyone’s to-do list, a van can be the face of your business so keeping it tidy only makes sense.