My 3/4 ton full-size carpet cleaning van is getting tired. It has come time to replace it. When I started looking at new vans, I.... My 3/4 ton full-size carpet cleaning van is getting tired. It has come time to replace it. When I started looking at new vans, I discovered a comparable one is actually two inches higher.

This is a problem.

You see, our garage door opening is just high enough to fit my old van, but would be too short for the new one. The only option is a cargo minivan.

Conventional wisdom is that bigger is better, and no self-respecting carpet cleaner would ever opt for anything other than a full-size van. And there's the cleaning machinery issue (in the industry we call them "truckmounts." Surely you need the biggest you can get don't you?

Well, necessity made me challenge those assumptions, and led me to purchase this coming week, a minivan with a smaller truckmount.

What's amazing is the new truckmount will actually outperfom the old one in water temperature, pressure and vacuum.

Even better is the fact that my fuel consumption should drop by at least a third. I'll report on that in a few weeks as I start tallying the gas receipts.

Sure, plenty of people warned me not to go this route. Supposedly I'll need all of the extra space, power, and stuff like that.

But when I look at steadily increasing fuel prices, and I consider about how much more environmentally friendly my new vehicle and truckmount will be, I have to think at the end of the day, smaller will indeed be better.

John Lennnon once sang: "People asking questions, lost in confusion. Well I tell them there's no problem, only solutions."

Solutions!

That's the word. I suppose all it takes is to let go of old assumptions, re-examine problems with new eyes, and keep our minds open to what we may discover.

Smaller can indeed be better.