Transport is the easiest component of festival vending to overlook, but it’s the one you should be least able to take for granted.
You’ve got approval for your market stall, stocked up your home selling corner, and paid for your pitch fee. Most people think they’re home and dry at this point as first-time festival vendors.
Then they realize they’ve got to somehow transport a 3×3 meter gazebo, two folding tables, 50 kilos of product, a cash box, a sign, weights, and probably a generator from their garage to a muddy field forty miles away.
This is where dreams of being a festival vendor become harsh realities.
The Volume Nobody Expects
Here’s where many people fall short. They have it envisioned in their minds what the size will be. Packed away, everything seems compact. But a gazebo packed away is substantially larger than a pole once set up. A gazebo bag is a 2-meter pole. A folding table takes up more bulk than just a corner on its side. And if you’re selling anything tangible, the boxes add up quickly.
Most people will load everything in their car, halfway there realize they need to put the back seats down, and still find they can’t fit half their items in the car.
Now you’ve got to make decisions about what gets left behind, which invariably ends up being your backup stock or extra proper weights for your gazebo because your vision told you that four weights would be enough, but your experience told you that may not be enough if it gets windy.
The second thing nobody tells you is protective measures. You want everything in sellable condition. Pottery that’s stacked on top of pottery that’s precariously on top of a table on top of some blankets will not yield the same results as having cargo with space. Therefore, you spend your setup time opening broken containers instead of engaging with the public.
It’s easy to determine if you need something bigger than your car. Lay everything out that you plan to take in your garage or driveway – everything – including the things you keep forgetting – a tool kit, first aid box, spare rope, spare extension cables, and the bag of weights you haven’t yet purchased but you’ll need for your own sanity.
If it looks like a lot when it’s spread out, it’s not going to magically take up less space than you assume when you go to pack it into the car. If you’re a proper vendor selling tangible items and using a decent-sized gazebo kit setup, you’re going to need at least a small van.
Services like hirefleet offer daily rentals that serve the purpose when weekend festival vending is needed but on average you’re not looking to drive a van for the rest of your life to justify the purchase.
The math usually works out pretty well where a weekend van hire will cost £100-150 plus size and time constraints. Putting that against making your partner follow you in a second car for fuel and parking twice over – or worse, getting halfway there with a makeshift setup and having to adapt because weights didn’t fit?
Weather Reality
Festival grounds aren’t car parks. Most of the time you’re setting up on grass, sometimes an uneven ground, occasionally fields where they were soaked from rain the night before. If you’re relying on one trip in your car to transport everything, think about parking that relies upon soft ground access for standing and unloading heavy items ten times over.
Access to vehicles becomes tricky during many events. Many festivals don’t allow vendor vehicles onsite until a certain hour – generally early morning – before patrons arrive at ten AM. If you don’t get the access time right, you’ll be hauling everything from a car park half a mile away.
Even some events only grant 30 minutes of time to load and unload to get vehicles back on the pitch – prime time when you’ve got fragile stock as well!
Not to mention, if halfway through bad weather or wind comes up, you’re going to need to shut down quickly if you’ve got limited options for transport vehicle space where you’re playing Tetris instead of setting things down safely so they don’t break and you’re not rushed and soaked through in thirty minutes with everything piled in if you’ve got baseball cards instead of paperweight ponchos.
The Loading Sequence
In addition, there are some unconventional methods for how things should be placed in your car based on what needs to come out first when setup commences before trading starts at all. What you need last goes in first.
Access to the gazebo frame and cover are necessary first since they go up before anything else; the tables after that. It’s decent access to stock and display items last since they can’t come out until everything is set up.
But people do not think that way when they’re putting things in their car at their house – even logically! The gazebo ends up being the last thing out because it’s inconvenient access with all this other stuff piled on top of it when you’re unloading your entire car onto wet grass just to get to your frame.
Commercial vendors utilize transit vans not because they want to seem flashy, but because they’re walk-ins and accessible pieces from various heights and directions without boxing yourself into a corner. That’s truly difficult when time is of the essence.
One more thing – weight distribution matters more than you’d realize! If you’re selling anything heavy like metalwork or ceramics or bottled goods, putting all that weight into the trunk makes for harder maneuvering when it’s grass uneven distribution support.
Vans sit differently and handle heavy weight differently when navigating access roads that amount to dirt roads at best through fields.
Overnight Events
Single-day markets are different beasts than multiple-day festivals. Some festivities allow you to keep your setup overnight with security roaming around; others do not, and you must decide how your event will operate before making transport decisions accordingly.
If you’re breaking down every day at 10PM without option for keeping things up overnight (unless you want to sleep on-site), then be aware you need reliable access at the end of trading time that either allows or keeps very close proximity to avoid major pitfalls if places tell you to park in other areas outside of the venues proper confines – £2,000 worth of stock, loads of hard work and effort need 30 seconds if you’ve been trading for 10 hours!
Otherwise you can keep it set up overnight and sleep in your vehicle as many vendors do; however a car is not meant to be slept in unless someone is extraordinarily flexible and doesn’t mind being uncomfortable. This excludes most vehicles.
The Backup Plan
Your vehicle can break down – in which case rental companies have back up vans – and your personal vehicle breaking down day-of with an event you’ve already paid £150 pitch fee? Horrendous!
A vehicle that’s pre-booked has a confirmation number with a contract – if something goes wrong there’s recourse or accountability as there’s no leveraging it against your own transportation network – you can also chalk up mileage use on your personal vehicle as well – some people are okay with doing this; others would rather keep private use separate from business use.
No one wants to deal with their own vehicle potentially breaking down in the morning of a poorly planned festival after paying their pitch fee of £150. By outlining all potential problems ahead of time, it’s no longer your responsibility.
Getting Your Transport Right the First Time
The biggest mistake new vendors make is underestimating space needs by assuming they’ll have space later available by someone else who’s transporting goods somewhere else or by someone else who’s bringing less than expected and now you’re struggling with what gets left behind after making two trips only wasting everyone’s time.
You can’t function properly vending half stock still in your car because it didn’t fit inside – but even worse – you can’t function confidently vending if you’re worried about your gazebo blowing away because proper weights didn’t have space or vice versa.
Work backward from what you’d ideally have set up at pitching station for travel purposes – make a note as to everything that needs to go from home to site – measure little things too – the big items – and lastly – add at least another 20% margin on top of what’s suggestive because you’ve forgotten something before.
Then go ahead and budget for hiring something that works correctly – not what may fit if you’re lucky whatever’s in boxes! Festival vending can be lucrative and fun but only when it’s treated like the small business venture it is – and unfortunately that means getting logistics right from the start!
