Bit out of my depth on this one: Just had a very good, regular customer ask me to clean the gutters at their site.

It works out at 378m of reasonably straightforward access and it's mostly not that high.

As it's fairly compact and not horrendously full of rubbish, what do you think I should be charging per m?

My previous van I bought for £3750, ran it for 5 years and traded it in getting 2k part ex. New van was 5.5k (3.5k less 2k part ex). I've run this current van for 6 years trouble free and it's still worth 2/2.5k. It's a work tool, the less money I   spend on it, the more of the money it/I earn 'I' get to keep! 👍

Most employees who work there are a bit thick. I bought a pair of premium axle stands for the price of the cheap ones because they were on the wrong shelf 👀

Obvioulsy buying cash outright is the cheapest (unless your money could earn more in savings that the rate of the loan/finance, unlkely)

Best idea is to not buy a new one and buy an old one, even with repairs you`ll be better off than paying the depreciation.

Quite often these days you will get a better  deal paying some of the cost of the vehicle on there finance rather than cash outright sale it works out cheaper as they give you a much better price that’s what I have found with my last two cars .

With the prices of vans nowadays I wouldn’t buy brand new as there is too much depreciation. I bought brand new in July 19 and sold privately last month, total depreciation £13k in 6 and a half years. You would probably lose that in under 2 years on a new van now. I opted for a 1 year old van this time with 1000 miles on the clock.
The monthly repayments on a new van using PCP etc might look appealing, but be sure to dig deeper to find out the true overall cost, for a non VAT registered sole trader this isn’t the way to go IMO.
If you have the funds I would buy a nearly new van outright if I were you, avoid taking finance from a garage as they will charge around 10% interest on a used vehicle. If you do need finance you’d be better with a personal loan.
I’m guessing with you being in Scotland and regularly ‘trousering’ big money along with your pension income you will have hammered through the 42% tax bracket? Should be decent tax relief on the purchase then.