There are both good and bad points on having either 1 man or 2 man van set-ups, personally I prefer a 2 man set up.
There are a lot of benefits for a start on large commercial 2 men are faster than one, on domestic although they will not be able to do twice as much work as a one man van, the costs saved from only using one van instead of two and the extra amount they can do is just the same as having two vans on the road.
The other thing is sick and holidays, you need to plan for both of these, on a two man set up if one is off at least the other can carry on, with a one man set up, when he is off that van is not earning.
With regard to the customers and them getting only to know the cleaner who turns up, well I always call the night before, so I am always meeting all my customers every month, even though I don't clean their properties.
and as for the cleaner doing odd jobs on the side or taking my customers and starting up on his own, well the first is easy, the van is set-up with a gps tracking device, I know where its been and for how long.
and on the second point I have a water tight employment contract in place and if they do take on any of my customers within the first year of leaving my company and I can sue them for the lost income, so thats what I will do, I will wait 50 weeks and then take them to court and get the past 50 weeks of work they have done and been paid for, paid to me.
Of course getting the right cleaner and paying well should stop this.
You need a good memory Hydro, e.g. what you post in what thread and when. 
I don't really care if you care. I try to advise peope if I know what I'm talking about, I'm not here to try and impress anyone, unlike one or two upset members on this thread. 
Can't keep everyone happy. Like Steve sed has already pointed out, this customer "smells" bad. Simple.
That was a really good post about multiple vans though, even though you made it up as you went along. Forums are there to get help, advice and tips. They also attract Water Mitty types though. These are easy to spot, they use funny words and contradict their own posts. Nobody seems to have a strong enough memory to remember when the bullpooped and in which threads. Anyway, hit the report to moderator button and hope the other members will forget that you tripped up. 
If you read the post correctly I gave my opinion on what I think is the best set ups, and for domestic 1 man vans are ok, unless its tightly packed work where 2 men in 1 van will work better the same applies to commercial.
Yes you are right how can I give an opinion on what setup are best if I only work 3 days a week, well lets look at that, if I didn't employ or take casuals on, I would be working 7 or 8 days every week of the year with my current workload, I instead look at working a smarter way.
Some examples
I have a contract in Gloucester I do every 3 months, if one man was to do it, it would take him 3 to 3 1/2 days to do, 3 months ago I used 1 van and 2 staff and it took 2 days, last week I did the same job in 1 day, this time I used 3 staff and one van plus 2 backpacks.
Last year I did a carpet cleaning contract in sheffield that took one van 2 machines and 2 cleaners 5 days to do, this year I intend to use 4 staff and 4 machines and I should complete the lot in 2 days.
I do the same with all my work, every time I have to do it again I look at cleaning it faster, paying a wage for the day and being able to double my income is good sense to me, but others won't agree and thats fine with them.
I don't need to lie, my work is growing but I also look and use smarter ways to do this work, of course there will come a time when I max out on what can be done with what I have now, when this happens another van will go on the road.
a mate of mine works 5 days a week, from 8 to 5 with a helper and at times he earns the same or less than me, he know what I do, and how I do it, but he is happy with what he is doing.
Mind you, he has taken some notice to pricing and how I operate and his son who now looks after the window cleaning side has heathy small round that is growing faster than they thought.
But like you said its upto each one of us on how we run our businesses, but I feel that with my turnover into days worked and profit margins achieved does give me the right to post on topics.
