Hey guys, it's the bread trucker here. A lot of people have asked me so many questions about stepvans, so I wanted to make you some videos. This one is the 5 best things about stepvans. For those of you that are new to the world of stepvans, let me explain what they are. This is my stepvan. This is my stepvan. This is my stepvan that I've converted into an RV. This is my stepvan that I've made into a house truck. This is my stepvan. I live in it. Old bread truck that I turned into a house and I roll around in it. This step is why it's called a stepvan. A lot of people know these as bread trucks, male trucks, ice cream trucks, FedEx or UPS delivery trucks, maybe even SWAT team or police vehicle trucks. But one thing they all have in common is that step. Before we get into this guys, I just want to let you know that I'm not an expert. I'm just a guy that has owned and lived in a stepvan for a few years. These five things are on my list because of my perspective of building this into a RV conversion or a tiny house truck. These qualities may be totally different to somebody that intends to do something different with a stepvan, like a mobile food truck. Number five, 90 degree angles and flat surfaces. As you can see in a bread truck, everything is so simple because it's completely flat and all angles are 90 degrees. If you're in almost any other vehicle you're dealing with compound cuts because of curved surfaces, it makes building a stepvan so easy compared to a sprinter, for example. Going into this very little experience, building this rig for me was really super easy though. It was as simple as attaching a couple two by fours to the body and building from there. I used pocket holes throughout most of my construction and it made it super simple. Sometimes you might get lucky and you find a stepvan that has insulated flat surfaces as well. On to number four! The number four thing I love about stepvans is fuel mileage. This stepvan amazingly gets 14 miles to the gallon. The reason I get such good gas mileage is because of the motor in this truck. It's a four cylinder Cummins turbo diesel. People are known to run these on veggie oil. They have no electronics so they're EMP proof, somewhat. They're very simple and I've heard you can rebuild one of these motors on the side of the road. 14 miles to the gallon is pretty good for this truck but I think I could do even better. I'm hoping to get upwards of 20 miles to the gallon. I could make a few tweaks to this truck by changing the rear end gears, transmission, and tuning this motor so that I can get even higher fuel mileage. So that is why fuel mileage comes in at number four spot on the best things about stepvans. Number three, cost. These vehicles can be had for very little money. For example, I bought this one for $3,700. They're available at auctions all over the country. Another way you can find them is on Facebook, OfferUp, LetGo, Craigslist, check all those places to find these vans, but you can find them for very little money. Also keep in mind though, the less you pay, the less nice it is. So a little bit of money does go a long way with these. So I bought it for $3,700. But that's not what it costs to make this truck happen. The way I went about building this truck is I just moved into it when it was bare bones empty and built it as I went on the road. I've put a lot of things into this truck and it has a full solar system, kitchen, bath, queen size bed, working office. I mean, it really has everything that you could want. And my total investment into this truck is $15,000. I think it's a very low cost alternative to some of those vans out there, like sprinters, pro masters and transits. For a custom built rig that is made totally personalized, I think $15,000 is a great place to be for an investment on a truck like this. Some vehicles out there you can't even get into for $15,000. They are definitely not this big. A lot of the materials I built in here are repurposed, junk that I found in dumpsters and trash day. Building it on the road as I traveled was really nice. I could pick up things I wanted that I wanted to build with. My number four thing really helps my number three. The fact that you could just build anything you want on these flat surfaces with things you pull out of the garbage makes it really easy and cost effective. What do you say we talk about? Number two, one of our favorite topics on this channel. It just wouldn't be a van like video if we didn't talk about number two. Number two, aluminum body. Almost all step vans are completely constructed out of aluminum. As you can see from the outside, it is all flat surfaces. This is a giant box on wheels. If you absolutely had to, you could totally scrap this van and get your money's worth out of it just to scrap value of aluminum. Having an aluminum body has a lot of advantages. One is corrosion resistance. Some people say they are corrosion proof, but that's not true because aluminum still does corrode a little bit. It's nothing like rust though. Aluminum also has another quality that is great and that is it's lightweight. If you had built this out of steel, it would weigh way more than it does now. There are a few downsides to aluminum. It's a fair day cage and it resists radio waves from getting in. Sometimes that is a little bit troublesome with Wi-Fi and cell phone reception signals. For some people, they may want to get that stuff out of their life. One bonus to these aluminum bodies is a lot of times they come insulated as well. I have at least an inch of insulation all the way around this truck and made it really easy to build. So I have to deal with that. There's a lot of trucks out there that come air conditioned, heated with generators, the whole nine yards. If you get a snap on truck, you're talking like very nice. One feature of this aluminum body that I really love is that it has old-school rain rails. It was very easy to attach a cargo rack to the roof and put my solar right on there. But overall, the reason this is my number two thing I love about stepvans is that the aluminum keeps the truck so lightweight. So that brings us down to the number one thing that I love about stepvans. Stealth. The number one thing that I love about my stepvans is how stealthy it is. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm sure some of you out there are thinking, how's this big huge truck stealthy? I get it all the time. I really do get it all the time. But people just don't understand. It really is stealthy. I mean, right now I'm in the middle of like a farm. And it fits really well into the little shanty town up there. But most of the time when I'm going through cities and stuff like that, I always have a parking space. I went for an entire year driving this truck and didn't pay to park at all. There was one time. It was only $16. If you are building a rig and you want to have free parking and you don't intend to stay in residential areas, this might be the rig for you. I can literally go just about anywhere and spend the night no problem. Commercial areas, industrial areas, retail areas, those are all places where this truck totally blends in. Street parking in those areas usually works really well. But also in strip malls and parking lots and all sorts of other areas that you might find. I like to try it. I like to just see what I can do and I'd like to try all different kinds of areas. This type of vehicle would work really well for someone who's a city jweller. That has to do this type of street camping all the time. And not to mention, it's huge. You get 112 square feet of living space out of a 14 foot box. The price of rent for a place that size and a place like San Francisco, New York City is... $1,000? I don't know. I don't pay anything for rent. I just pay for diesel, so that's kind of like my rent. Rent, diesel is rent. My truck is this nice tan color. That's the color that the bread company that delivered bread with it had painted it. My truck definitely has a bread truck look to it. It looks like it might be delivering bread with the red wheels and the tan paint. Depending on what kind of second hand step-van you get, you might be able to stay in slightly different places based on the way your truck looks. I have a lot of people that tell me I should put my YouTube name down the side of it or do a big mural on it. And while that would be really cool, the stealth capabilities of this truck, just the way it looks right now, is really what I'm looking for. In the future, I might actually put the bread loco's back on the truck like it used to be back in the day. So those are my five top things that I love about step-vans. I encourage you to go over and watch my other video about the five worst things about step-vans. These rigs aren't for everyone, so I want to inform you of all the things I love and the things I hate about them. Many people I know are now considering buying or have bought their own step-vans. What have I done? I've created a monster. Driving a step-van is a little bit strange, and I might be a little hardcore. But all in all, I think these trucks make an absolutely incredible, off-grid, tiny house on wheels, stealth camper, RV conversion rig. Leave a comment below if you have any questions, advice, or thoughts about this topic. I'll be glad to answer any questions you have, and realize guys, I'm not an expert. I'm just a guy that's owned a step-van for a few years, and lives in it. Thank you very much for watching this video. If you're interested in step-vans, hit that subscribe button because there's a lot of step-van content on this channel. Be sure to give this video a thumbs up, and I'll see you down the road. Lots of love. This is Paul Barger, the bread trucker, and I'm out of here. Did you know I was going to do that? I thought you made. It's a little sneak peek then. Yeah. The lady behind the camera.