Transportation

The first vehicle I ever bought myself was a short school bus off craigslist. We bought it as a tour vehicle, it being the cheapest option, but it quickly started to feel like my little home. There are lots of little things about it I look back on fondly; the smell of diesel, driving with all the windows open, sleeping on the floor while the engine rumbles. It died in Florida and was a major pain in the ass to get home (we traveled in the back of a U-Haul), and so no one wanted to sign onto my plan to buy a school bus and trick it out for touring.

My desire for my own school bus built stronger and stronger, then I bought too many. Here is the general idea…

School buses, as assets, are quite likely always undervalued. Schools across the country have varying mileage or age limits on their buses before they have to, or get to, replace them. So every year they get government money to buy new school buses and the old school buses get auctioned off. Supply, demand, yada yada, you get a cheap mobile 30’x7’x6’ box. The best part is that, despite their short lifespan, most buses are made to last. With strong engines that are cheap to rebuild and simple parts to source from the trucking industry, buses can go for millions of miles with upkeep at a cheaper cost than trying to do so with a commuter car.

“So why isn’t everyone doing this?” To some degree, this perfect theoretical situation is attempted to be kept in check. Certain states will punch holes in the engine blocks to make them unusable and sell them to scrap yards as is. They have managed to keep the market for buses just scarce enough to not create a catalyst of everyone buying them just because, which is really the only thing they care about. Hilariously though, those scrap yards usually sell those same buses to buyers in South America who patch the holes in the engine blocks on site and drive them down. These South American buyers have some sort of mythical status around the bus auction market it seems, sounds like they buy like 35-50% of the buses that US school get rid of.

Anyway, the idea of my project here is to take advantage of this and create an institution where people can have access to big vehicles, for whatever their need, without having to own one. Flowery language to paint capitalism as a mutual aid project? Maybe, but not really intentionally. I may write more on here about the confusing nature of that. For now, the intention is to break even and form a fleet that can be accessed by all by charging less than other rental services by having a more efficient use of vehicles and finding creative ways to implicitly “pay-it-forward”.