How did we pick Atlas?

We get this question so often, but to be honest, in the beginning, we had literally no idea what we were doing! There was no book that said: “This is what you want to look for when you decide to pick up your life and pack it into a school bus.”

Because of that, we spent hours sitting on our laptops and researching as much as we possibly could. Not because we had time to waste but because we literally had no idea what we were doing… literally no idea. Jade came to realize that what we were looking for was something not too big, but not to small, had zero to little rust, a diesel engine, and low mileage. Ultimately, something that wouldn’t break down two months into our journey and we didn’t have to sell a left leg and arm to buy it. Seems like an easy check list right? Wrong.

We searched for school buses, large vans, coach buses, city buses, party buses, and any other vehicle you can think of! We finally decided a short school bus would be the best fit. Not a full school bus because the more research we did, the more we learned that some national parks and campgrounds would not let full buses buy a space to camp on the grounds. We also learned that for a 40ft school bus, you may need a special license, CDL license to be exact. We did not want to have to go through that process, so short school bus it was!

We found Atlas and she checked all of our boxes. From the fact that she was 27ft bumper to bumper, her low mileage of 31k, the fact that she was a standard diesel or her knew tires and breaks, we knew she was the one. We payed 6,500 USD and once we started our demo process we found little to no rust… so I guess you could say, we practically won the lottery with Atlas!

Advice: Don’t rush your process of searching for a bus. When you rush, that is when you buy a cheap bus and end up for what you payed for! If you have the few extra dollars, spend it. It will be well worth it in the future!!

Picking up Atlas…

You know when the people who you are buying your school bus from are flying a rainbow flag, it’s meant to be!