There's not much call for vans in my line of work. It's a source of disappointment. If you're a writer, you don't generally accumulate much in the way of tools. Some pens, a laptop, a few bits of paper - it's not the kind of stuff you need to be slinging into a Ford Transit at the start of the working day. A car will normally do it. In fact, if we're being honest, a bag will normally do it.

As a result, writers, in common with many other people in tragically equipment-light trades, miss out. We miss out on the van-driving experience and on the immense and lasting self-certainty that comes from owning and driving a van.

I know this because I have just spent a week with a Mercedes Vito Sport X - fully panelled rear, sliding side-doors on both sides, the works. And when I set off in the morning, I wasn't just some scuffling hack with a bag. I was a key component in the backbone of Britain. (That's Ford's slogan, I appreciate. But it counts for all vans, surely, wherever they are made and whoever is driving them.)

One initial regret: my Sport X wasn't white. It was a rich red, the colour of Noddy's cheeks. Still, if that can help us to get past the unhelpful “white van man” stereotype that has stunted the understanding of van culture for so long, then all well and good. Certainly I'm here to tell you that there's much more to the van-driving persona than hair-trigger rage. For instance, there's clipping the pavement with the rear wheel while going round a corner, followed immediately afterwards by hair-trigger rage. To name only that.

This was the first van I have driven that didn't have a hire company's logo painted all over it. (And you'll get no respect in one of those, of course, the logo revealing that, far from being hard at work for Britain, you are merely moving a sofa for your brother-in-law.) You're hardly roughing it, though, in a Sport X. Replete with leather interior, a terrifyingly fast 3.0 litre diesel engine, and body-styling by Brabus, it seems to be targeting the plumber who is also a rapper.

Mercedes says, “Now you can work hard all week and take your friends and family out in style at the weekend.” Not in my van, you couldn't. It had only two seats, so unless your friends' idea of going out in style stretched to rolling around helplessly in a windowless tin box, excursions were likely to be a non-starter.

There was comfort in the cab, though, and room to spread out authoritatively. The wing mirrors are the size of the plasma screens in a footballer's house. Work on it properly, though, and, after a while, when you inspect the contents of those mirrors, you develop a proper van driver's lean. Not to mention an open-shouldered, spread-legged driving stance. You are high and you are mighty.

After a while it began to feel a shame to have a big, walk-in van and only use it to carry a computer. So I put out the call to friends and relations, indicating my availability for casual furniture removal. No luck, though. Typically, when you actually want to move furniture for your friends, your friends have no furniture to move. Friends only ever need furniture shifted when you don't want to do it.

I did, though, find someone who needed taking to the railway station, along with his bike. Job done! Job utterly nailed, in fact. And then I went around the house and found a small roll of offcut carpeting, a broken flowerpot and a large sheet of pinboard that needed taking to the dump. This is what life would be like if you owned a van. You would never have any rubbish in your house or garden, ever.

Except that, of course, vans are banned from the dump. Otherwise every builder in the county would be in there, dropping off people's unwanted bathrooms and tipping out sacks of plaster at no expense. The attendant who stopped me at the barrier handed me a piece of paper setting out the rules on prior notification procedures, which explicitly stated, in bold letters: “Note: Toyota Hilux and Mercedes Vito type vehicles are not deemed to be cars”. That was me, that was. Just because I had leather seats and a superbly efficient air conditioning unit, it didn't mean I could pass myself off as a Range Rover Sport.

I ended up parking outside and carrying the rubbish in - which, quite apart from spoiling the point of having a van in the first place, seemed deeply infra dig to my van-inflated sense of self. The alternative, though, was to go away and come back later in a car. What? When I could be driving a van? No chance.

Top speed: 122mph

Acceleration: 0-60 in 8.3 seconds

Average consumption: 38.1mpg

Eco rating: 6/10

One careful owner: Bob the Builder

On the hi-fi: TalkSport

In the glovebox: monkey wrench

Bound for: Travis Perkins

Buy it because: there's work to do

Marks out of 10: 9

Price: from £24,995