Letter: Van in a million

Sir: Can you please tell me where I can get a white van like that driven by the 28-year-old Mancunian in Alex Hayes' article "Highway robbery on the M6" (Review, 7 December)?

It is stated to have been carrying 150 crates with 2,500 pints of beer in each crate. This makes 375,000 pints or some 210 tons dead weight of beer alone.

Counting packaging, the total weight must have been some 250 tons (aluminium cans) or 300 tons (glass bottles).

Some 375,000 pints have a volume of 7,500 cubic feet (say, the equivalent of about six or eight average domestic garages or half an Olympic swimming pool) and that's just the beer itself - packaging would at least double that.

Wow, what a van! And if this is a small-time smuggler, what's a big-time one?

N A WALTER

Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex