A reader (hey Dan) emailed me asking if I had thoughts on why I chose to build out a trailer instead of a van or short bus.
As a matter of fact… I do have thoughts on that. Here goes.
My relationship with Serenity
In 2018 I finished construction of Serenity, my cargo trailer conversion. Serenity has been my primary domicile since then, although I've lived in a couple different rentals for a couple months at a time (and now I'm overseas).
I towed Serenity all over the west, from California to New Mexico and up to Oregon. I put something like 10,000 miles on her, at a guess. I've boondocked in more spots than I can remember, and gotten in to and out of dozens that required high clearance and/or 4wd.
From when I moved in to her in 2018 until June 2020, I worked full time remotely. June 2020 through early 2021 I worked part time.
There are benefits to having a trailer versus having a van as your primary domicile. These are my experiences and thoughts on the van vs. trailer decision. I'm assuming the situation is long-term living (>1 year) for one person who will be doing some significant amount of computer work, in North America. (I assume a trailer will almost always make no sense in Europe, where a van is the best choice).
Serenity is a 6' wide, 12.5' long box. The tires are outrigged, so total width is about 8'. I replaced the drop axle with a straight axle. What this means is that Serenity turns well, can get down narrow forest roads without much fuss, and has lots of ground clearance. There are places my truck can go that Serenity can't... but not many.
The vast majority of forest roads I encountered in the west were fine for Serenity. I didn't attempt the washout below Bowman Lake, for example, although with a bit of shovel work I probably could have made it. Only once did I have to jacknife U-turn... and that was just to be polite and not six-point trailer turnaround in the middle of someone else's dead-end campspot at 0200.
A point here is that I almost always did a lot of scouting, either with satellite maps or in the truck. As I got more experience I became comfortable doing less, but I still almost never found myself driving down a forest road with no idea what was up ahead.
I rarely had reason to go into a city and mostly avoided them successfully. Driving a trailer in a city is anxiety-inducing at first, but honestly you get used to it. I doubt that driving a large sprinter is significantly easier than a Taco with 14' trailer - easier, yes, but not enormously easier.
The biggest drag, literally, was towing up steep slopes in a headwind while trying to maintain highway speeds. Or even flat land in a headwind. My Taco was juuust enough truck to responsibly tow Serenity in most circumstances, but in any kind of very stiff headwind (in excess of 30mph) my choice was to drop speed to 45mph, or really hammer the truck to maintain speeds over 60. Highway 40 in Arizona was nervewracking because the semis go 80, so 45mph is absolutely unsafe and even 65 is kinda sketchy. I always took back highways along that route.
Steep passes weren't a big deal because I'd just tuck behind a loaded semi going 35 or 45 and chill. (Going down was fine because I had good electric brakes on my trailer. Don't sketch out on your trailer brakes.)
Style of Travel: Base Camp or New Place Every Night?
My style of travel was to get to an area and spend 1-4 weeks there. I would scout out (or already know ahead of time) a good spot in the woods, set up Serenity as a base camp, and drive out in my truck to go climb, ride, re-supply, get internet, etc. This allowed me to get slightly better gas mileage for my day to day travels (18mpg not towing, vs 14mpg or even worse while towing).
I worried a little about theft, but nothing bad ever happened. Serenity has no windows and a hitch lock, and doesn't really look like its full of expensive toys. (It also happens to *actually* not be full of expensive toys). The thing I worried most about was that I'd come back and my two 250w solar panels would be missing.
Breaking and setting up camp with Serenity was enough of a process that I didn't like to do it any more frequent than every 4 days or so. On multiday road trips when I would just stop for the night, I often did a 'light' setup, not bothering to perfectly level her or even unhitch. There's nothing inherently more involved with a trailer setup, I just never got around to completely dialling every aspect of it, so for example I always had to tie down my stove which just sat on the counter top, and tie a string around my pantry doors, etc.
Actually, there is a setup benefit to a trailer. I think it's easier to get level, because you only need to park it side-to-side level on two wheels, and then unhitch and adjust front-to-back level with the hitch jack. Easier than trying to park on top of four level points under a van, I imagine.
Since in a van you have to make it road-worthy every time you even need to run an errand, I guess that I actually did less overall setup and breakdown than I would have in a van.
By the end, I was somewhat stressed that all the heavy towing was really hard on my truck, and I worried about something breaking on it. I would have felt less stress if I'd had a beefier (or newer) truck. Beefed up suspension would have eased my mind quite a bit, as I never had any issues with the motor or transmission.
A trailer decouples shelter from transportation (which is good)
Philosophically, I really liked having my transportation and my shelter decoupled. For example, a couple times my truck needed to be in the shop for a few days. This was no disruption to my sleeping / working /cooking arrangements, because Serenity was still wherever she was and I just had to arrange alternative transportation.
And now, I don't own a car at all. I sold my truck before leaving on my current trip. Serenity is comfortably parked on my parents land, costing me something like $14/year in registration fees, barely depreciating. I'm not concerned about gasoline going bad and gumming things up or hoses cracking or gaskets drying out. If I ever decide to hit the road again, I can buy another truck. If I want to move Serenity infrequently, I can borrow or rent a truck.
The other point is that my truck is good as a truck if I'm not towing. I mean, if I want to go four-wheeling deep into the desert, I can just unhitch Serenity and go. Or if I want to grab a load of lumber, same. A van typically doesn't make a good lumber getter.
I'm really happy that I can keep my cozy little offgrid shelter without having to maintain ownership of an internal combustion engine vehicle. This was part of my thinking going in to this, and I'm happy to say that I was right on about that. I've never regretted owning Serenity or felt like she was a burden, and I don't anticipate ever thinking 'hm, what am I going to do with Serenity, I have no use for her'. I think I would have if she was a van. That said, I have no plans of ever living in a normal house long term. I'm not planning on buying or building a normal house, so Serenity is going to continue to play a large role as Shelter in my life for quite some time. If I thought differently about shelter and my future, she might not have been such a good idea.
Some van things
Speaking of vans, let's talk about vans a bit. I've never lived in a van, although I spent a fair amount of time in Robyn's 1985 Vanagon, and I have lots of friends who live in their vans.
They're obviously better if your style of travel is to move frequently or spend significant amount of time in cities.
The primary downside of vans, to me, are that transportation and shelter are coupled, so if your van needs to be in the shop then you need to find alternative transportation AND shelter.
This is the basic reason I never seriously considered a van: I assumed I'd like to set up a comfortable base camp and then be able to womp around the local area in light n fast mode. For the most part, that's exactly what I did, and I never found myself wishing I had a van instead.
Although, now that you mention it…
I honestly really like the idea of a short bus build. I think they’re super cool, and they’re built like tanks. They’re functionally vans, though, so all the reasons I prefer a trailer over a van apply to short buses. I could possibly talk myself into a short bus if I committed to running WVO or Biodiesel. At the time I put Serenity together, the extra logistics and learning curve of WVO/biodiesel were not in the cards.
For me now, I’d only consider buying a broken bus of some sort. I have zero desire to own something that gets 7mpg and already has 400k miles on it. I’d tow it to a place with a nice view, park it, and build it out into a cool tiny house. Or greenhouse. Or workshop. Broken buses are super cheap, so I think it’d be a fun build. I currently have no good excuse to do this anytime in the near future unless someone commissions one (which… if that’s you, let’s chat).
But what about a third option?
The thing is, trailers are kinda big and heavy. And vans are pretty specialty, and expensive. I think there are a couple more options that people should think about when thinking through rig choice.
If I had it to do over again, I would seriously consider building a pop-top cab-over camper on a Tacoma or fullsize pickup. I really like this guy's build, although it'd need some modifications to work well for someone doing computer work I think.
At this point in my life, I consider Serenity to be a luxurious amount of space for one person. She was big enough to make it fun for a couple to live in while road tripping and having fun - working full time remotely from Serenity, or in inclement weather, was definitely not fun for two people.
It's quite possible I'm wrong about the camper being enough space. In that case, I'd consider building an ultralight trailer, similar to what jeepers pull. It'd be primarily for gear and supply storage, so the living space can be nice and lean. I'd give some thought to having the sleeping quarters be in the trailer, like a teardrop, but I suspect that wouldn't work out. The trailer would be for food, water, extra clothing, possibly the fridge, possibly the power system if I needed a beefy one for 3d work.
This is just an idea - it might be sort of like a van, but worse, and thus an extra terrible idea.
I also have to say, I spent two months living out of my truck on a road trip, sleeping in a tent because the truck had my motorcycle and gear in it. And that was really nice. So, I'd ALSO consider a truck and tent combo. There are some pretty dope large tents that you can stand up in and take less than 20 minutes to set up, a number of people do this. I also own a large tent so I have some idea of this.
I like how little capital investment this option requires - you can go with a very basic camper shell that houses your PV system and kitchen, and a <$1,000 tent, and be pretty much done with the construction of your living space. I'd have arrangements for the camper shell to be able to sleep in it without much fuss when pitching the tent isn't attractive (e.g. putting in long days and just stopping to sleep at night, or city stealth camping). This seems like a very flexible approach that you can tune the components of easily.
Anyways, this is a topic with an endless amount of possible approaches, and the specifics of each person's desires are going to dictate a lot. Hopefully some of these thoughts are useful to figuring out your unique perfect setup, Dan.
Have thoughts, experience, or questions on this? Know of a cool rig style I haven't mentioned? Leave a comment!