Van Life Wisdom Why I Chose an Ambulance

what is my personal priority in living a nomadic life and that's going to be different for everyone and there are no right or wrongs if it's your personal priority that's all you need to know but make it [Music] hi everyone welcome back to my next video as you can see i am standing in front of an ambulance what i think is a really nice ambulance and it is mine i have bought an ambulance and so i know a lot of you are going to be curious bob why in the world did you buy an ambulance and so that's what we're going to talk about today now all my reasons are very personal and they probably won't apply to a lot of you but i'm going to try to make it so the process that i went through in making my choice will be helpful to you so why am i selling my van actually i'm not selling my van i'm going to donate my old van to homes on wheels alliance the 501c3 non-profit that we we founded and um and donate to them and they'll raffle it off and you can watch the homes and wheels alliance.org page for information on winning the raffle i'm shooting this in uh beginning in may of 2021 so if you're watching this later it's it's over by now i'm sure uh be aware of the date so why am i changing the most important thing you can do is decide what is my personal priority in living a nomadic life and that's going to be different for everyone and there are no right or wrongs if it's your personal priority that's all you need to know but make it your personal priority and not some weird guy on youtube or your friends or your family search your heart and decide this is the life i want from living on the road in a vehicle for me that's getting into the backcountry because that's that's where my heart belongs and that's really what you want to find out where does your heart belong what makes your heart sing now for some of you that might be being in towns because you enjoy culture and museums and being around people perfectly fine if that's what makes your heart sing then go for that and you'll make a very different choice than i because this is not going to be good driving around in the city and stealth parking in the city so because for me being in the back country is a priority my history has been that i get stuck a lot in two wheel drive vans occasionally i did find one that didn't get stuck very often but uh i'd had i'd been in a four-wheel drive f-150 pickup for about three years and it worked fantastically for me i desperately have wanted for a long time to get back to a four-wheel drive i regretted not being in one ever since i sold it so i've been thinking i want a four-wheel drive pickup i want to get into the back country nature is my reason for being out here it's my highest priority so i started looking for four uh four wheel drive pickups when you'll say why not a four wheel drive van because they're few they're far between they're very expensive they're non-factory you're not buying a four-wheel drive uh fan from the factory with true four-wheel drive transfer case high and low end uh locking hubs you're just not going to buy that so i wanted a four-wheel drive pickup then i thought okay i'll get a camper but then with a camper two reasons why i didn't want to camper all the weights on the rig you got to buy a big heavy truck to carry it it's really tall that's my main problem with campers is their height and that's an enormous drawback in the national forest roads start to grow over and you can't get them down these wides they're tall and wide and that was a downfall not only that but my knees are a problem really a bad problem and i couldn't i don't want to have to climb up into the bed of a four wheel drive pickup and then up into the bed and my dog is going to have to jump up in the bed and i lived in an f-150 and i know how big a deal that was getting into the rig i didn't have a tall bed to get into but now i would and how big a deal that was for my dog so i kind of ruled out four wheel drive pickup and camper well one day i stumbled across an ambulance store in bakersfield california where i bought this van and he had these four wheel drive factory four-wheel drive on a dually chassis that's called a cutaway that means they all it is a cab and then a bear frame and then the manufacturers different manufacturers put different boxes on them whatever you want uh and of course this one had an ambulance and i said to myself that's the perfect thing for me so my priority being back country four-wheel drive pickup camper uh all the the interior is mostly built and ready to go and ambulance was the perfect thing for me it's lower than a factory camper and much lower the center of gravity will be built lower it's built down around the wheel wells uh in every way it's not as wide as most campers and that's why it's in most ways superior to me it's uh it's on a very heavy a dually one ton frame the gross weight on this is 13 500 that's huge it's got a duramax diesel with an allison transmission the allison transmission is by far better than any other diesel transmission on the market the duramax to my mind is not as good as the cummins but it's very close and so the duramax the diesel uh was really a handy thing if i want to get more into the back country i can tow a jeep at some point in the future with this setup i can easily tow a jeep and so that left me flexibility for the future probably none of that's important to you you decide your priority and laser focus on your priority and get that for yourself within your budget the next thing that was really really important to me is i am running a business out of my vehicle home cheap rv living as the website and the youtube channel their business i make a substantial amount of money doing it and i pay taxes every year and it's become a big thing i needed a studio i need today's a windy day but at least it's not raining i need an inside studio where i can shoot videos in bad bad weather if i get a week of rain i just can't shoot videos right now in my van so i wanted to set up a studio i also am the president and the co-founder of homes and wheels alliance and we have meetings and gatherings all the time i needed a gathering place i needed a conference room in my home because not all of us live on the road none of we don't have a building we probably will someday we may have a building i don't know when that day will come so until then we meet inside and bad weather rain wind those are normal routine things in the desert you've got to be inside and so we we i needed the gathering place the ambulance with this big open space fulfilled that perfectly that's something for you to think about if you want to do things that take a lot of room you want to be you want to do crafting on the road you want to be a carpenter on the road you want to install solar on the road uh you want to be a handyman on the road whatever i mean there's the options you want to sew you want to paint all those things take more room inside and having space that you can spread out first thing i did was build a bed across the back i'll show you uh and so i have a desk i can work at you could you could build this vehicle around your desk where you can art or you can do your art whatever your art may be think about what you want to do with your life and can you get by with a small space if not then an ambulance really is great for that and my third reason was because it was halfway ready to move into and required so little effort i mean with all the storage in it i didn't i don't have to do much of a build i added a bed i added a desk i added some shelving i've made a few minor changes to it you'll see but for the most part you could move right in and be done and living in it immediately so because i have so little time uh i had plenty of room on the roof for solar and i needed a lot of solar uh it was just the perfect thing for move in ready there are a few things as move-in ready as an ambulance so the first three reasons were i wanted four-wheel drive to get into the back country i wanted a big space to do business and i wanted it to be move-in ready minimal amount of work with plenty of room space on the room on the roof for solar the fourth reason i wanted to i bought an ambulance over anything else and i've given this a lot of thought for a long time is the quality an ambulance is built to last decades it's built to last forever here's let's think about this scenario you buy a cheap half-assed poorly constructed vehicle like an rv which is the ultimate in really crappy construction uh and it starts falling apart no one cares they've cheated you you know you've been cheated you fix it as you go and to be honest if you buy a crappy rv and you take it out once a month it'll serve you for a long long time if you buy a crappy rv and you move into it and you're going to live in it full-time with all your stuff and your travel constantly it's going to fall apart pretty much immediately so you're out on a run and someone dies because your ambulance has broken down and it's poor quality and it's just falling apart you'll be sued out of existence and so this thing is built to the highest quality standards it's rollover tested uh it's it is these things are designed to last for decades the quality is one of the most superior of all vehicles on the road the only thing i think that is higher quality than an ambulance is a school bus and the most important thing on the planet is in a school bus so that is number one but i think number two is an ambulance because it's your life and your life's pretty important to you and it's pretty important to a lot of other people so the quality on these things is superior they're almost always all aluminum on the interior the exterior there they have uh insulation they're well insulated you're out at 110 degrees 130 degrees the thing can't get incredibly hot inside you'll all die from heat stroke you can't all die from heat stroke on an emergency run and so they're extremely well made i've seen people with these that are 20 years old and you shut any of the doors anywhere on that box and it shuts like the day it came out of the factory it's not going to just fall apart and finally the final point to me was the comfort i'm going to get out of all this open space i like a small space but because i've been running a business out of a van it has gotten really cluttered and full and so moving out into uh the ambulance which will give me so much more room uh everything can be hidden away it can be put in places it won't be cluttered i'll just have i think i'm going to be just tremendously more comfortable without any question living inside the ambulance instead of the van one of the problems that come with all all ambulances is they rarely have windows an adequate amount of windows for living in but they can be added later and potentially i will add one later now let's talk about some of the reasons you would not consider an ambulance and i'll be honest with you in the past the the reasons not to get an ambulance have far outweighed the reasons to get one uh at this point in my life things have changed and this works really well for me i just i know deep in my art this is the right thing but why wouldn't you get an ambulance first they're more expensive again the box holds up forever and has value in and of itself uh new ambulances are are very very expensive so you know it used to be the idea you could go out and buy a three four five thousand dollar ambulance and you still can but if you do that ambulance will have well over three hundred thousand miles and it will be one of the small van ambulances ambulances are go by categories this is a category one it's a a light duty box this is on a one ton frame a category two is just a van regular van with the high top and all the the storage and things are built in category three is a heavy duty truck it's going to be a 4500 this is a either it's an f uh 3 350 if it's a ford or an f or 3 500 if it's a chevy it's a one ton category threes go above one ton one of the things to factor in you might be you just might automatically think well great a 4500 that's a big heavy truck that's even better i can get those in four wheel drives as well but one thing to factor in is that your insurance will be more we'll talk about insurance here in a minute but it will also have really big tires this has standard 16 inch tires uh because it's a little older this is a 2011 the newer ones are probably going to have 17s and as the tire gets bigger they get much more expensive your 4500 is going to have a 19 inch tire that is a tremendously expensive tire you're probably looking at 600 a tire uh it's going to be outrageously expensive next the big reason not to consider one of these is the cost of the insurance now every state is different there are 50 states there are 50 different sets of regs about commercial vehicles this is a commercial vehicle it was bought by a company and used commercially and so and it's heavy it's a one ton the gross on this is 13 500. that you know people uh usually don't buy these heavier vehicles as personal vehicles they're commercial you have to find out from your state what your regulations are as far as getting a taking a commercial vehicle and buying insurance for it it's going to be different in every state and i can't tell you what it's going to be a lot of states it's just no big deal you go do it you tell your insurance agent that this is a turning into a camper he says fine he insures you no problem and i hope it goes that way for you but there are states where they will simply will not they will not do it they make it impossible the standards and regulations for making this into a camper are so high turning it into an rv are so high you're just not going to be able to do it or you're going to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and an enormous amount of time meeting all their requirements i'm in nevada and when i registered this entitled it he he i talked to the guy for a while about it and it didn't sound too bad i'd have to put in permanent tanks i'd have to put in a toilet i'd have to put in a stove a mounted stove not just my camp stove but it wasn't terrible i am using it commercially in the business at least part time and so i felt to be ethical i had to go ahead and pay insurance business insurance and it's very expensive you as an individual you will want to really rethink the whole insurance thing easy solution get the vin number before you buy it call an insurance agent telling i'm buying this vehicle this is the vin number how much is insurance going to be that's all you have to do you have to do that no matter what right you can't in none of the states can you can you title a vehicle and register a vehicle without um without insurance already you have to do it do it before you buy it's just that simple get the van talk to an insurance agent be forearmed before you put down any money on any commercial vehicle problem solved so there you go there you have it that's why i have chosen to uh buy an ambulance and move into it and again i will donate my old van to homes and wheels alliance and they will raffle it look into that go to the homes and wheels alliance page uh again this is may of 2021 so if you're watching this much later that's going to be over be aware of that i hope you got some ideas now i know a lot of these were very personal individual to me and they won't apply to you but those are the ideas you think about what are my priorities what do i need out of a vehicle home and get the things that will make you happy so over the years i've learned that i don't want to climb up into tall places i want to get into the back country i need a certain amount of room i would like as i get older i would like to maybe consider towing towing another vehicle so i have a spare vehicle those are all things that you need to think about yourself and apply to your own personal situation what do you want out of a vehicle home be really honest how much comfort do you have to have actually i'm looking for a little more comfort now than i used to and that will change and changing homes is normal this is my fifth vehicle expect to be changing vehicles over the course of your time living as a nomad nothing wrong with that really normal and typical do your best so you waste the least amount of money the first time but accept the fact that you may have to change along the way so i hope you got something out of this video if you did like us on youtube subscribe to the channel hit that thumbs up button and we'll talk to you later bye now [Music] you

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 251,687

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, snowbird, caravan, tiny, house, tribe, RTR, adventure, Bob Wells, Nomadland, CheapRVLiving, Cheap RV Living, vanlife, van life, how to live in a van

Id: 1H56Y6Wz-fY

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021