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Sometimes when Dale Martin works in his office, strangers will approach and ask what the heck he is doing.

Some will even wonder if he is doing reconnaissance work from his 16-foot-long white van.

"Yes, we get that sometimes, especially in this area," chuckled Martin, 52, founder and president of Mobile Accounting USA, as he sat in his office parked on the street outside his Bethesda home.

"I don't know of many accountants who operate like I do," Martin acknowledged.

Martin started the accounting-on-wheels business as a franchise in North Carolina in 1986 under a former company called Debit One and soon moved to the Tidewater area of Virginia. After Debit One went out of business, he liked the concept enough to change the name some two decades ago and continue on.

Gaining his first client in the Maryland-Washington, D.C., region in 2002, Martin moved to Bethesda in 2005. He now has two partners under a licensing agreement in the Tidewater area, one of whom is his daughter, Melissa Martin, and hopes to add a few more. His son, Chris, started working as director of marketing and customer relations last month after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

"I like what I'm doing," said Chris Martin, 23. "I handle aspects like maintaining the Web site, business marketing and advertising."

Having a mobile office is fairly common for services such as medical care, with vans that drive into neighborhoods to give flu shots and take blood. And it's likely common in other businesses, such as reconnaissance. But for accountants, it's a different story. Many accountants will take their laptops to a client's office, but a lot of clients don't have spaces for them to work, Martin said.

He said he knows of only one other accountant in North Carolina who operates a mobile service like his and had read of others in Georgia through the Internet.

The mode of practice is likely "pretty unusual," said Nancy Kuenster, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Tax Professionals, an Appleton, Wis., nonprofit professional association, "though we wouldn't know for sure because we don't keep records on that part of our members."

Martin's office on wheels contains everything he needs — a laptop, printer, scanner, calculator, shredder and various office supplies. Like many other accountants, he goes paperless and doesn't need to store a lot of documents in filing cabinets. If he needs to crank up the AC or heat, he can — the vans are equipped with diesel engines that can run for hours.

"It helps to want to be outdoors a lot," said Martin, who taught school and managed small businesses before entering the mobile accounting field.

While he is not a certified public accountant, Martin is a certified Quickbooks ProAdvisor and active in organizations such as the National Association of Tax Professionals. His practice includes bookkeeping, tax planning and preparation of tax returns, payroll processing, sales tax filings and W-2 statements. Clients run the gamut from a one-person painter to a 60-employee, $9 million business in the Tidewater area that makes cabinets and countertops. Among the larger Maryland clients is a 14-employee cabinet shop.

While a key advantage for him and clients is having less overhead so he can provide "more service for the dollar," it also helps for him to meet clients in person and be able to regularly check on them, he said. His van gets about 22 miles per gallon, but he doesn't overload it with miles, putting in maybe 1,500 miles a month.

"I like working with numbers and with people," Martin said. "This way, I can do both. You get better information and can work with people better when you can ask questions in person."

This report originally appeared in The Business Gazette.