Our Van - 2019 Ford Transit

Welcome

Our first blog post! It's exciting. Our intent for this blog is to share our experiences and journey while living life in a van. Madi and I visited many different websites and blogs from various vanlifers during our own conversion. Much of the wisdom and knowledge that we found online helped us get to where we are now. We hope that our blog can offer some entertainment and maybe some direction on the ins and outs of living life in a van, if you are a person interesting in pursuing the lifestyle. For our first blog post we want to introduce the base model van we decided to go with for our home!

“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” -Anonymous

When we began the search for our home on wheels we were wide open to the many possibilities on the market (RVs, travel trailers, toyhaulers, fifthwheels... so many options!). We toured brand new rigs at dealerships and rigs that were 30+ years old listed on Facebook marketplace. There were so many options and we felt overwhelmed at times.

Did we want a towable trailer, an RV, or a cargo van? At first, we actually submitted a loan application on an new RV, but we were denied, because we were recent college graduates with student loan debt. We look back now and feel so fortunate we were denied, because that led to us finding our van. It also saved us a lot of money because the interest rates on the 15-20 year loans we were offered were high.

We ultimately decided against an already built out rig because of the price. Most class-B RVs (that is those with a van body) that we looked at cost close to six figures. We were not in the position, nor were we willing to drop that much money on a van. We weren't going to let money stop us from the dream of living a life on the road so we decided to venture into unknown territory for a DIY van conversion. A future blog post will focus on the timeline and process of our conversion.

Our Ford Transit

We ended up finding our Ford Transit from a new/used car dealer in Ohio. We went back and forth on buying a 10-15 year-old van and getting a great deal, or spending a little more for a new van. We both love the idea of saving a bunch of money and getting an older van, but we planned on putting a lot of miles on the van, so we found a happy medium. We found a van that was one year old with just under 19,000 miles.

Our van is a 2019 Ford Transit 250 Hightop. Our model is the base model with windows in the back doors. The Ford Transit 250 has a 275-HP, 3.7-liter, V-6 engine (regular gas). It's an automatic 6-speed transmission, RWD. Unfortunately, the van did not come with a hitch, but we were able to install our own hitch on after we bought the van (we will insert a link about that process in our conversion blog post). We get around 14.5 mpg (highway) with our van fully converted. Below is a breakdown of the Ford Transit design with the dimensions of various models.

We took the van for a test drive and knew at that moment it was the one. We worked out a deal with the dealership and began to plan out the design of our new home. Little did we know a DIY van conversion is a massive undertaking, especially, when your timeline is 30 days. We got it done with a lot of knowledge and information from other van blogs, combined with the help of our friends and family. In our next blog post, we are planning on giving an overview/tour of finished van, and then backtracking to highlight the various steps taken in the van conversion process.