Using the word "and"

my ideal situation would be to rank high for the words "man and van" in that order. when searching using this phrase google kindly informs me that the "and" is unnecessary.if this was true then using the phrase "man van" or "man and a van" would get the same position but they dont.is this general or an exception where and is common in the phrase?
im based in uk where "man and van" is a common description for small removal companies.

I think you don't have to worry about it, google is including all the stop words by default in the search. You are naturally targeting it by using it within your content. Believe me also Google is smart enough to know this phrase exist, I tried myself man and van and the first page had some of the business you have mentioned.

My other proposal is to find a site that is already ranking good, and to see what they are doing to make this happen. You can also use "Man & Van" where & will be replacement of and, but this is of course - secondary.

also get a completely different set of results by changing the order
e.g. "van and man"