Couple Retires Early & Builds Awesome 4WD Overlander RV

hey guys jenna here welcome back to my channel where i feature alternative homes and creative spaces do you ever think about retiring early to travel the world what if you could do that and also eliminate the hassle of booking planes trains and even hotel rooms well in today's video you're gonna meet one couple who's been living on the road traveling all around the world in their self-built adventure home for the past six years so let's jump right in and hear more about their inspiring story how they achieved such an amazing lifestyle and take a tour of their four-wheel drive adventure home on [Music] wheels hello we are sani and karsten from germany herzl common we are excited to show you our rig a-route which we've been living in the last six years [Music] we met when i was 17 and carson was turning 19. already then we knew our life is going to be all around traveling only travel that was our plan always and we began with volkswagen camper buses we bought them very cheap we bought them as an empty van and built them ourselves had a nice vacation with it and then we sold it again and bought the next one yeah that kind of paid our vacations because we were students we had no money at all we needed something bigger not too big just right and we also wanted something with four-way drive and high clearance so we could go everywhere we wanted to go so we started talking to people with different trucks and somehow all the people were not really happy with their trucks except for the people having this kind of truck they were all chilled and they were all smiling so we said okay that's the right thing and then of course carson's grandpa had one like that and then before we got it we knew already it's going to be named after carson's grandfather grandfather my grandfather's name was evald so we named our truck after his name [Music] we started already 10 years ago to travel with the empty box nothing in here just a mattress and then we traveled on and off we both had our own companies we made good money and then we could stop early so we didn't have to make money when we travel we didn't want to work until we were 60 or 70 we knew we want to stop mid 40 which we made six years six years ago we stopped working and we went full time with this truck carson always wanted to buy one and he was on this auction site all the time and every time somebody else got the truck so then he said i bet now on two trucks we have two trucks now which was pretty good because we had to take awol completely apart we restorated the truck yeah it was a hard dirty work a lot of welding he was very rusty the restoration process took two years after two years to put all the parts back together again yeah it's good to have a brother a twin brother right next to him [Music] since we want to stay off grid all the time we need good batteries we need a solar system i would say the total cost of this rig was one hundred thousand this is a mercedes medium heavy truck the weight in total is about 18 500 pounds but we are very slow so maximum speed is about 55 miles per hour it's a 5.7 liter straight six diesel engine but it has a good gas mileage it reaches up to 13 miles per gallon this kind of model was built in the 50s 60s and 70s this special one is built in 83. in germany they have a special department for rescuing and therefore they had these kind of truck here you can see we have a mpo driven winch it's a heavy duty winch it can pull up to 10 tons we can always rescue ourselves in the middle of nowhere these tires are made for off-roading bigger than the original ones they're very noisy on normal roads but very good they weigh about 250 pounds each and cost about 700 bucks each here inside the crew cab we have all our stuff for outside the table chairs the flags where we've been already on three different continents in 20 different countries we saw a lodge so far here we have our two diesel tanks with the capacity of about 80 gallon and that's good for about 650 miles here you can see the water pipes coming from the engine to our boiler during driving we can get the heat from the engine and heat up our water so every time we stop anywhere we have hot water to have a nice shower here we got our trunk this is the second fridge we carry all the meat for outside grilling and cooling the beers here we've got all the equipment we need to fill up water to fill up the tires when we're off-road [Music] these are sand blades which can help you get out of sand or mud here you can see the trailer hook it's a heavy-duty trailer hook we could tow heavy duty trailers up to 11 tons this is our bicycle compartment where we have our two normal bikes and we use them very often and it's very easy to take them in and out we also have a outside shower here which we use when we come from the beach and have a shower outside in the sun holes we can pull out and put in here so we can have a nice shower outside [Music] this is our gray water tank with the capacity of about 50 gallons it's not heated and it's mounted outside so we have to be careful normally we leave it open when it starts to get cold so it doesn't freeze in the night this is the hydraulic oil tank for the winch here we have a ventilation system and it's built for cassette toilets so you don't smell anything [Music] inside this is the inside with new installed seats so they are also air pressure seats very comfy ventilated by air so you always have a cool fanny when you sit on it here you can see the really old-fashioned metal dashboard like they used to build it in the 50s and 60s and it's still that way until the 90s so now carson i showed you the outside of ewald i would like to show you the inside welcome inside now we are in a huge living area this is our main space for living dining getting together with friends having fun we love it to be together we can sit about five people here it gets cozy but it's nice to be together underneath these seats we have all kinds of stuff under this one we have our water which is about 100 gallons and so it's a big space when we thought about getting our water tanks it's actually two we decided on having about 100 gallon we thought that would be just the right size for us and after 10 years we have to tell it is the right size for us we can go up to six weeks so it's great for us so our table we can move it actually from left to right and we could also lower it we like to move it from left to right so we have more space in the kitchen for cooking we like to cook the both of us and when we sit there we can move it here and it's more comfortable for sitting i really love sitting here and looking out and it's open so easy so i'm so happy with these windows the mosquito net and then the shutter you can just move it with one hand [Music] so this is our bedroom compartment which we really like we would never change anything about it when carson started designing a route we said the most important thing for us is the bikes so this is the height we needed for the bed so the bikes fit under it then we have a lot of compartments back there we have clothes we have more storage than we need which is pretty cool to have it gives us a good feeling i still can collect more memories going around the world and this is norbert our shark we got them from friends traveler friends they know we like sharks and we used to have a picture back there a scuba diving with sharks but it was all blue and blue we felt a little cold with it so when we went on a hike in greece we took this picture we thought this would just be perfect for the back of our bed feels cozy and green and nice [Music] here we are in our kitchen one of my favorite places even though i'm not a good cook but i love to cook we just try everything we buy stuff we don't know and then we just try to work it out somehow and it's really fun when we first started building the kitchen we just had the sink no cooking section when we really moved into evite we thought we really need a true cooking section we were really happy we rebuilt it you see the picture in the back it's fruit we wanted to have something colorful we have a lot of white of course we have wood too but we wanted to have something really colorful back there first i was a little disappointed that you just see a little bit but i think it's just cold here we have the fridge of our evite it's a small fridge but it's a drawer fridge and we really like the drawer fridge i can fit in quite a bit of stuff but we really need a second fridge and that's what we have in our garage then we have our drawers a couple of them and carson put in everyone a second layer so we can maximize the size you can always take it out and you have more space then here under the sink carson building something so we even can use this and we have our potatoes we are german we like potatoes so we put the potato space there down here we have again more storage carson really did a great job when he decided to get enough storage so we have two huge drawers which are full with food which can bring us easily to four to five weeks if we want to the only thing that limits us that we don't have fresh food of course we have two of these and i'm really happy with it it's very convenient and a lot of travelers are envious of it [Music] you see our memory picture wall here it's pictures of our travels with evolved and our life with evidence of course our family and friends who we carry around with us all the time the family and friends who are at home it's just good memories we sit on the other side in the evening and quite often we just look over here and talk about the different pictures we find okay now we're going to the bathroom so inside here we have a little tiny sink which is which is just enough for brushing our teeth or washing our faces here we have our homemade our self-made composting toilet carson just got a inlay fix it all around it and i think it looks really decent i like it we have a diverter inside and for the second part we use the sawdust we never have bad smells in here and it's very simple and easy to handle and it gives us a lot of freedom we also have an inside shower and i'm so happy to have it because when it gets cold it's not fun having showers outside with warm water we're not limited at all since we have certain ways to to warm up our water we have warm water when we drove and we have it after that for at least 24 hours even after that if we stand longer we can heat it up with electricity which we get from our roof with the solar system i feel blessed every time we have a shower in here every time i could just sing which i do it's it's great having a shower so this was our bathroom now we can turn on and go on to our crawl through normally the driver cabin and the normal cabin is not connected and we put a lot of work into it so we could connect it when it's raining and we want to drive away we just crawl through here and we don't have to get wet or have muddy feet underneath the bench we have all the electronic stuff like the inverter and the battery and so on it's all outside of our living space and here this photo we took in scuba diving in french polynesia it was a very special moment when the humpback whales showed up it's uh such a special moment that we both had to cry when we were on the surface again because yeah if you ever have the chance to scuba dive or snorkel with a humpback whale do it so here we have our control panel i would say carson's favorite thing he made it completely himself and i think it's really very well done so you see most of the stuff is from votronic it's a local company in germany not far from us they started out equipping fire engines a long time ago and then they they went into the rv market and we are really happy it's very reliable we have it since 10 years never something went out and we are very happy and we like to support local companies everything is organized and easily accessible and you can just control everything in ebol from here our life is based that we really love to travel different cultures for us as we say in german it's the salt and the soup the spice of life it's just in us we have to travel we want to see new cultures we want to meet people all around the world and and dig into the culture we are really happy especially here in the states you have so much public land where you can stay and that's what we really enjoy about traveling we're going to stay in north america probably for next two or three years then we're going to travel central america and then south america and from there we ship over to africa or australia we don't know we don't know yet thanks for watching this week's video make sure to like share and subscribe and tune in next friday for an all new video on alternative homes and creative spaces

Channel: Tiny House Giant Journey

Views: 73,830

Rating: 4.9650402 out of 5

Keywords: tiny house giant journey, tiny house, tiny homes, tiny house tour, nomad, nomad life, nomadic life, nomadland, expedition vehicle, 4x4 rv, homemade rv, mercedes truck, mercedes-benz rv, truck chassis rv, army truck rv, german rv, self-built rv, diy rv, rv life, off-grid, off-grid rv, 4wd rv, 4X4 rv, tiny house on wheels, early retirement, tiny house movement, nomadic movement, off-road rv, housetruck, rvlife, house truck, overlander, overland rv, overlander 4x4, overlanding

Id: coZGskglx8Q

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021