Our personal belongings didn't amount to much, it was the inventory & equipment for our business that would require so much space when moving. My wife & I priced a moving truck & we really didn't think it was worth the investment to rent. Instead we should buy. We were in need of a vehicle that could serve as both a moving vehicle to get us 2100+ miles across the country & a business office for our home based business, Redefining Reusables. We searched step vans/bread trucks & found a few we really liked but they were too expensive.
More research led us to school buses. After a few months of looking at buses online we found the perfect candidate on ebay. A 1989 Thomas Transit Liner City Bus, retired from Space Coast Area Transit or SCAT. This bus was used for the Space Shuttle Tours in Cape Canaveral Florida. Well maintained it was showing 629,000 miles which is nothing for a vehicle as such. It was for sale about an hour away in Tampa. We packed up the truck with my wife 9 months pregnant, our Border Collie Lucy & myself. The trip to Tampa went well minus the 95 degree temperature & 90% humidity. We test drove this huge blue bus & to our delight it drove well & seemed solid. We proceeded to drop $3500 for this 10 ton beast. We were a bit naive in the purchase & maybe should have taken a little more time to look it over but it was final, it was ours!
Leaving downtown Tampa in this bus was a bit a a white knuckler as it had been years since I last drove a commercial vehicle but I was excited & it was all ours. With Lucy on board in the bench seat behind me, she hung her head out the sliding transit window, tongue hanging out with people pointing & smiling as they passed - by I was truly enjoying myself. We left the city & drove into a small town called Bartow on I believe RT60 when it happened. Coming to a red light, in the left lane of a 4 lane road I slowed to a stop, and...it died! This was 35 miles from Tampa - dead at a red light, in the left lane, during rush hour...ARGH! My wife was ahead of me leading the way in the Nissan pickup, 9 months pregnant with our first & tired from a long day. She turns around & passes me & pulls up behind the bus, hazard lights on.
Getting out of the truck she walks up to the bus. I air open the doors, my wife struggles up the steps & asks me what happened. Sitting in the air seat like a king on his throne I answer "I have no idea. It just died & it won't start" I said gritting my teeth. It turned over & over & over & nothing. It was hot inside the bus & we were getting hungry. Our only choice was a convenience store on the corner so we played frogger & crossed the highway, myself, my 9 month pregnant wife & our dog Lucy.
After about an hour and half a police cruiser pulled up behind the Nissan, lights on.
So we decided to call USAA as they offer free towing (for the pickup). They ask us what vehicle we have & we explain we just bought a bus for an RV conversion & no more questions followed about the bus. They arranged for a wrecker to come tow us but it was free for ony 11 miles. We tried to decide what we were going to do as far as where to take this huge bus where we wouldn't get in trouble for parking it.
We waited till 11pm when the huge triple axle wrecker finally showed up. By then I was exhausted being insulin dependent & hadn't eaten much of a meal & my wife who was due to deliver & our border Lucy who is epileptic without her meds. The dealer we bought the bus from had sent out their "smackey" as I call him to take a look at the bus to see what he could do, which was nothing, he was not a diesel mechanic. The officer who was baby sitting our broken down beast for a few hours now was a great guy, he helped entertain us throughout the night. Finally the bus was tied up to the wrecker (I wish I had pictures), a local Catepillar dealer had been found & it was only about 5 miles away. Perfect we figured, the bus had a Cat engine so what more could we ask for.
So it was towed to it's new home for the next 1-2 months. We decided to have it serviced as we did not want a repeat of this day while driving across country! The Cat mechanic did a typical 75 point check to make sure it was roadworthy. We had an airbag replaced, all fluids changed, a tuneup, the air filter replaced - the cause of it to die in the first place & a few other minor adjustments. All to the tune of about $1,400. She was now ready to go they told us, not a reason at all to be concerned. The mechanic said he would drive it across the country & back numerous times! Well it sure made me feel better about driving it 30 miles home at least as I was still not comfortable with it as we had only gone 35 miles in it total.
So we had bought ourselves a 1989 Diesel Pusher Thomas City Bus for our trip to New Mexico & she was home now. Our original plan after getting to NM was to convert it to an RV but she has provided us dry storage mostly for our ebay inventory & tools. What caught my attention was first the fact it was not a school bus, the paint was in great condition with a nice color & the low profile body, perfect for a motorcoach conversion. This beauty has a turbocharged Cat 3208 V8, air brakes, 22.5" Alcoa aluminum rims, plenty of power & smooth. Riding on 6 airbags this bus drove like a Cadillac!
Here are some photos of the bus being emptied of seats & interior set up for our needs. I pulled all of the seats & added heavy duty shelving for the ride to NM. This 15 ton beast was going to be packed to the hilt! I worked on her for about 3-4 months all the while my wife was taking care of our first newborn baby Nia who was born May! These were taken in the backyard in Sebring Florida during the summer of 2009.
Our friends Mike & Patti came from Austin to hang out & to meet little Nia. Mike helped me out & I made sure he got dirty!
This would be my idea of how I would like our bus to look if we were to convert it... so nice!
We bought & set up on off grid system which powers all of our business equipment. These are 100ah AGM sealed batteries. Our start up system is 270w from our PV array, a 1000w Xantrex sine wave invertor & a BIZ 25Aa charge controller. All was set up in the bus where the office was stationed. I built a large heavy duty desk to give me room while working, mostly listing ebay auctions, our main business.
This was our first solar purchase showing one of the three 90w panels & the charge controller & inverter. We paid about $400 for this lot, a steal!
More shots of the power station...
