When I first started looking into bus conversions, I figured school buses were the only real option. That’s what everyone talks about in the skoolie community. But the more I dug into it, the more I kept running across people converting city transit buses — the big ones you see rolling through downtown picking up … Read more
When I started narrowing down my bus search by manufacturer, Thomas Built Buses kept showing up in almost every listing. And for good reason — they’re one of the “big three” school bus manufacturers alongside Blue Bird and IC Bus, and they’ve been building buses since 1916. That’s over a hundred years of putting buses … Read more
If you’re thinking about full-time bus life, there’s one question that towers above all the others. Not “where do you park?” or “how do you shower?” — it’s “how do you make money?” Because without a reliable income, the dream dies before it starts. And in 2025, remote work isn’t just possible from a skoolie … Read more
Windows ended up being one of those topics I thought I could figure out in an afternoon, but the deeper I got into it, the more I realized how many decisions branch off from that one starting point. Remove them, keep them, tint them, replace them, seal the openings, frame around them for your walls, … Read more
Weight is the silent build killer. I can’t tell you how many forum threads I’ve gone through where someone posts their gorgeous finished bus and then two comments down, someone asks what it weighs, and the builder either doesn’t know or finds out they’re way over. This is one of those topics I spent a … Read more
Travel planning in a skoolie is nothing like planning a road trip in a car. I learned that pretty quickly. You can’t just punch an address into Google Maps and go. You’ve got height restrictions, weight limits, fuel stops that need to actually fit your vehicle, and a whole list of roads that will either … Read more
When I first started looking into bus life, the mechanical side honestly intimidated me more than any other part of the process. I wasn’t worried about building cabinets or running wires — I was worried about keeping a 30,000-pound commercial vehicle alive on the road, hundreds of miles from anyone I knew, with my entire … Read more
The kitchen ended up being the single most complicated part of my entire bus build research. Not because any one piece is especially difficult, but because every decision branches out into three other decisions you haven’t made yet. Pick your cooktop and now you’re knee-deep in your power system. Choose a fridge and suddenly your … Read more
Living in a steel tube year-round means dealing with temperature extremes that most homeowners never think twice about. I spent months digging into every heating and cooling option people actually use in their bus builds, and the amount of conflicting advice out there is honestly staggering. Some people swear by one solution, others call that … Read more
Framing and walls are one of those stages in a bus build where everything you did before — insulation, wiring, plumbing — either gets protected or gets buried. I spent a stupid amount of time researching this because I kept seeing builds where the walls looked gorgeous on day one and then people were posting … Read more