Van Stock & Site Custody: Inventory That Travels
The van is a warehouse that drives away; the site is a store with no walls — stock and equipment discipline for inventory that travels: loading transfers, nightly variance, site materials, and crew custody.
Inside the warehouse, stock control is a solved problem: locations, counts, documents. Then the stock gets into a van, or gets dropped at a construction site, or gets issued to a crew — and the discipline evaporates. "Van stock" becomes the driver's memory; "site materials" become whatever the foreman says remains; "crew tools" become a communal pool that shrinks. The fix is a single idea applied stubbornly: everywhere stock rests is a location, and every movement between locations is a recorded transaction.
Van stock: the daily loop
- Morning load-out: a transfer document, driver counts and signs — the van now holds its own stock, on the record.
- On route: every sale, delivery, and free issue decrements van stock at the moment it happens, offline if needed.
- Evening return: physical count back into the depot; the system computes the only number that matters: loaded − recorded movements − returned = variance.
- Attribution: the variance belongs to that van, that route, that day, that driver — small, named, and same-day, which is why it stays small.
Distributors who start this loop discover the same thing retailers discover with shift closes: the variances mostly stop within a month, not because thieves were caught, but because ambiguity ended.
Site materials: the store with no walls
| Failure mode | What it costs | The control |
|---|---|---|
| Deliveries straight to site, unrecorded | Nobody knows what arrived, so nothing can go missing — officially | Site receiving against the PO or transfer, by a named receiver |
| Materials consumed without job linkage | Job costing is fiction; overruns surface at final account | Issues recorded against the job/phase — the field version of recipe issuing |
| The site store as a communal pile | Cement walks, rebar shrinks, paint evaporates | A site storekeeper (even part-time), stock counted weekly |
| Leftovers at job end | Surplus vanishes or rots on site | Returns transferred back on the record; site closes at zero |
The job is the cost center
Everything that reaches a site should carry the job's identity — materials, equipment days, crew time, fuel. When the job closes, its true cost exists as a report, and the next quotation is priced from evidence instead of optimism. Contractors who run this discover their historical margins were 5–10% more imaginary than believed.
Crew custody: tools with names on them
- Tools and equipment issued to named people against signature — the custody principle that works everywhere it is tried.
- Per-job custody for the expensive kit (test instruments, generators, ladders): issued at dispatch, returned or re-confirmed at job close.
- A crew-kit checklist per vehicle or team, verified weekly in two minutes — the drill that keeps the drill.
- Exit clearance: no final dues until holdings are returned — the control that costs nothing and saves the most.
The weekly rhythm that holds it together
Thirty minutes, once a week
- Van variance trend by route — anything drifting up gets a ride-along.
- Site stock counts vs recorded balances, per active job.
- Open custody: who holds what, and what is overdue for return.
- Job material consumption vs estimate, for jobs past 50% completion.
- Returns and leftovers from closed jobs — back on the shelf, on the record.
Traveling stock is the hardest inventory there is — which is why it needs the offline-first mobile capture, the fleet math, and the full field-operations discipline working as one system rather than three spreadsheets.
Count the van like a warehouse
Load-outs, route movements, nightly variance, site materials, and crew custody — inventory that travels, finally on the record.
See van & site control in AWRAFrequently asked questions
Nightly van counts sound heavy. Can we count weekly instead?
A weekly count gives every variance seven days of possible explanations — which in practice means no explanation. The nightly count is ten minutes on a loaded van and less on a sold-down one; pair it with the fuel and cash close and the whole return ritual is under twenty minutes. Daily is the discipline; weekly is the decay.
How do we handle free issues, samples, and damaged goods on the route?
As recorded movement types with reasons — a sample issued, a damaged return, a goodwill replacement — each decrementing van stock under its own label. The variance number only means something when legitimate non-sales movements are captured instead of lumped into "shortage".
For construction sites, who plays storekeeper on a small job?
The foreman, formally — receiving and issuing on the phone against the job, with the weekly count done jointly with a visiting supervisor. The role matters more than the headcount: a named person whose numbers are checked beats an honest crowd with no records.
What about stock consumed by the crew itself — consumables, PPE, small tools?
Issue consumables and PPE to the crew as recorded issues (they are real costs of the job), and treat small tools below your asset threshold as crew-kit checklist items rather than registered assets. The goal is proportionate control — everything recorded somewhere, nothing important recorded nowhere.
