Need advice; short bus vs van pros/cons

so, i had a full size (35ft) school bus for 2 years. someone correct me if i'm wrong, but i've seen plenty of short buses that get around 15mpg, which is about as good as you're going to get from a conversion van.

if you get a short bus i'd get a diesel. the gas is more expensive, but mechanically the deisel engine is more efficient, hence the better gas mileage. also, your average gasoline engine will run a maximum of 300k miles before you start having serious problems, where a diesel engine will last around 500k+. So, if this is a vehicle you want to keep around for years and years, go with the short bus.

as for parking, the only real difference is how stealth you want to be. parking a short bus is easy, parking a full size bus is not (i speak from experience with both). if you want to stay hidden and not let people know you're living in your vehicle, a conversion van might be the way to go.

if you're interested in that route, i highly recommend visiting www.cheaprvliving.com, a great website for stealth camping in a vehicle. you should also buy his book which is available for $3 on amazon (you'll find it on his website) it's worth a look. the only unfortunately thing about both his website and his book is that he completely ignores bus conversions entirely.

the last thing i wanted to point out was that if you get a school bus, it's a total buyers market. meaning that short buses (and full) are in very low demand, so it's easy to pick one up for two to five grand. personally, i wouldn't pay any more than 3-4 grand. i got my full size bus for 1800, and i never had a single problem with it in two years, but i did get lucky with an exceptional deal. i've seen short buses on ebay for $5,000 but they were immaculate, running perfectly, and really polished, guaranteed to run for years and years, so that's the upper end for short buses.

another thing to keep in mind is that school buses are ridiculously well taken care of during their service (they are required to be by law) so the sooner you can buy a bus after it's been decommissioned the better shape it will be in. you won't get that with a conversion van.

okay, last thing (seriously this time), don't buy anything with over a 100,000 miles on the engine. you can fudge this a little (my bus came with 116k on it) maybe as high as 150k (on a deisel) but any higher than that and you can probably find a better deal somewhere else. just keep searching, high and low, ebay and craigslist, local paper, hell even call school districts directly to see when they're decomissioning buses and where you can pick them up at auction (there's very little competition at those auctions).

and www.searchtempest.com is amazing for searching multiple craigslist sites. hope that helps!

iflewoverthecuckoosnest said:

Hey, thanks, @dprogram.
I am going for the shortbus at this point. I've been hunting around a lot. Most of what I've found is around 3 thousand, but I might call up the local bus district to ask if they are having any auctions or anything. In any case, I will have enough to get one by the end of next month! Of course, I've got converting to do after that, but I'm getting closer and closer to my goal.
I keep spacing out at work and daydreaming about seeing all of the forests and coastlines of the US. It will be a huge adjustment and I will have a lot to learn, but I couldn't be more excited

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a friend recently turned me on to www.govdeals.com which is pretty amazing. it's an auction site for governement liquidation, and here in austin they just sold around 20 short buses for an average of 1-2k a piece! If i had the money I would have bought one right there on the spot, they were all in really good condtion. So yeah, check that out, I hope it helps you find what you're looking for!