While growing up in the 50's and 60's my family was involved with the FMCA (Family Motor Coach Association) and we were exposed to many different bus conversions; and awfully lot of them old Flxible buses, GMC "Greyhound" buses, Beck's and a few I can't even remember.
My father is a retired career Navy guy and I just grew up nomadic; I still prefer to be on the move so I always knew I'd end up with a moveable home. For quite a while I thought that was going to be an offshore sailing boat but I just never convinced my wife, Shelley, that she'd really love it. Then the memories of buses and roaming the U.S. and Canada with my family resurfaced and I latched onto converting a bus.
In my interesting life I've added 18-wheeler driving to my achievements so the thought of a big 'ole "Greyhound" conversion didn't bother me at all. Earlier this year (2003) when Shelley and I got serious about maybe converting a bus I started looking for Eagle's, Prevost's, GMC's, MCI's and such.
The more I looked and more I thought about it, the more I realized they weren't going to fit into our vision of what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go very well. Then I ran across a few ads for school buses and I started giving them some thought; and I swear, the first thing that came to my mind was the Partridge Family bus! Followed shortly by the 'hippie' buses I remembered seeing in the 60's and 70's. I also remembered many years ago reading a book called Rolling Homes with lots of unique vehicles shown and described. I found a new book by Roger Beck called Some Turtles Have Nice Shells...it's a very cool book. The photos below are from Roger's website...visit him!
Our plans are to spend a fair amount of time "in the boondocks"; we like to travel the back roads and stay off the "super slab" and it's important to us to be as independent as possible. That means dirt roads, gravel roads, secluded lakes and just about anywhere else we can explore. I started thinking about some of the smaller country roads I've travel in Pennsylvania, Vermont and the Northeast and some of the low clearances I've dealt with in getting around Chicago. I also started thinking about getting off onto gravel and dirt roads, finding that wonderful off-the-beaten-path lake and getting a large over-the-road bus stuck...you don't just call the local tow truck to pull a bus that size out of the muck. And then I started thinking about all the places a school bus has to go to pick up students...mountain tops, deserts, urban neighborhoods, big towns, little towns, rural areas, and in all kinds of weather too; converting a school bus started to make a lot of sense.
It's all about compromise
No one vehicle is going to be perfect for every situation...the trick is to get the best mix of attributes that will work for your personal situation. Once we decided to really move ahead and have a Rolling Home I looked at every conceivable possibility from all over the world (isn't the Internet wonderful!). We gave serious thought to Truck Homes, which even now take a close second to the school bus and if I had more time available for 'scratch' building that might have been our ultimate choice. Especially if I could have found a 4x4 or 6x6 heavy truck chassis at a reasonable price.
Had we decided we'd do more 'traveling' and less exploring and boondocking we might well have opted for an over-the-road bus like an Eagle or GMC. At this point we don't plan to cover the miles very often and as I found out when I brought our bus home (from Denver to north of the Seattle area) you can make good time in a school bus if you need to.
So, for us it will be a school bus. After chatting with an Internet acquaintance that owns a coach company (he runs everything from vans to over-the-road coaches) we decided to find an International chassis with a DT466 International turbo-diesel. This chassis is used for everything from farm trucks, to garbage trucks, to fire engines, to school buses. The DT466 is used in all those plus road graders, boats, and a whole lot more. Even if we happen to be in the remotest area of North Dakota (which is really beautiful) we'll be able to stop an the International farm truck place (they're everywhere) and get service or repair for our bus.
School buses are also designed to be economically maintained (relatively speaking) since most school districts don't have tons of money and the buses have got to keep running. I specifically chose a bus with a flip nose so that maintenance just couldn't get any easier; with the hood flipped forward everything under the hood is readily accessible and extremely easy to inspect. I wouldn't have minded the extra space we could have gotten out of a flat-nose bus but I couldn't have gotten the chassis and engine I wanted and I wasn't willing to crawl into/under the bus to inspect and maintain the engine (this is a very personal choice). It's really the same reason I didn't purchase a Crown school bus as much as I love them; I wasn't willing to crawl under the middle of the bus for maintenance. In the end it's your dollar and your choice!
Even if a school bus isn't for you I hope this have given you some insight and ideas. Good luck!
