I don't think they're marketable or profitable as a finished product.
Let me write you a draft business plan. You can buy me a beer in 10 years for thanks, because that's about how long it will take if you're honest about this. You can do it.
Facts about skoolies:
* Vehicles are 15+ years old
* Do not comply with current emissions as they sit
* Wrong vehicle type, must be converted from BUS to MH
* Conversion in the eyes of most states require a RIVA certification
* RVIA certification -> requires following NFPA 1192 RV standards -> requires unannounced onsite inspection of facility for fullfilling obligations for adherence to standard.
* Don't have RVIA certification? Good luck getting FMVSS manufacturer certification, which means you're not selling vehicles commercially.
* This also means your buyers will be unable to acquire insurance for your vehicles sold easily. It will be case by case basis, which is what all of us self built folks have done.
In a nutshell, North America is not designed to accept recycling of old vehicle such as a school bus to refurbished product as a mainstream activity, and thus tend to exist on the lunatic fringe.
Thus, there is a reason many of us are called "bus nuts"
Personally, I feel that INDIVIDUALLY, things are fine - we are not trying to turn a profit against entrenched commercial forces, and are therefore not a threat.
I know someone who rebuilds old volkswagen vanagons and is very successful at it. However, he doesn't ever bill or advertise them as rebuilt, just "repaired" - even when they have basically been stripped down to the sheet metal unibody and built back up.
The plan:
If you wanted to proceed with your plan, I would advise you to instead invest in building or acquiring an independent RV dealership or repair shop, that suddenly specializes in skoolie vehicles. Many/most RV shops will turn down business when they see a skoolie, due to the wild fluctuation in build quality and just sheer unknowns.
You will advertise the crap out of your business. Make deals and partnerships with all the skoolie groups and forums, offer to pay for advertising and invest in their platforms. Market all the pintrest things, get all the instagrams, make all the facebooks. Social marketing for these "unattainable" things is where it's at.
Everyone wants a hand built bespoke adventure vehicle that is not acquirable at any cost.
Turn that into an opportunity and see where it goes! Do NOT get into remanufacturing school busses though - you could go there but you ultimately will not make enough money to keep the lights on and pay your employees.
Once your "RV Repair and Rebuild" shop has it's footing in a few years, (with skilled ex-cons (which is a risk your funding and investors may be averse to) or whatever), you should by then have an RVIA cert for your state under the belt, and some experience as a licensed used vehicle lot. These items will allow you to legitimately operate as a business, and take in work from insurance claims and whatnot.
From where you would stand at that point, it's not too traumatic of a shift to take on a few special builds with an empty shell specified from BB, Thomas, or the like and issue your own custom built "Brand new" skoolie RVs, with an intact RVIA cert.
At that point, you would be selling expensive vehicles, since you're basically building upon a new bus chassis, but with all the other business going on (rebuilding existing RVs, repair, etc) you have established in the eyes of "people who care - ie state/taxes/regulations" that you are a legitimate operation.
Since you have experience in the RV industry, you have the contacts, the skills, and expertise to execute custom RV builds that carry RVIA certification on bus platforms. From there, partner with bluebird since you're making bank on volume production, and bring back the Wanderlodge - the Original one, made from steel - the kind that Johnny Cash and Elvis owned.
10 years.
^^ Click the link, read the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition.
Hello All!
Anybody who saw my intro knows that I have ZERO experience with this and is scratching their head thinking, "Why the **** is this chick asking if you can make money at this?" Let me explain and then I hope you can answer some questions.
I've recently been let go from my job in Corporate America and I'm pretty happy about that. My intention is to drive for Uber while I work on my pet project - starting a re-entry program for the formerly incarcerated where I teach them entrepreneurship.
One of the ways I'm hoping to support the non-profit is with business ventures. I just had the thought that if I find a couple of guys who are mechanics, electricians (you guys can tell me the skills someone needs to do this right), then maybe I could help a couple of guys get their first one going so they have something in their portfolio to do this on their own.
Here are the questions I have:
1. What is the cost of the AVERAGE school bus conversion? I've seen vids of guys getting cool stuff from the dump (kitchen cabinetry for instance) and I figure I could build relationships with builders, etc. to keep costs down. But I wanted to know how much one could reasonably expect to spend in order to do this so that I can figure out other stuff down the line, such as:
2. How long does it take? Assuming you did this as a full time job - roughly how many hours do you think the average conversion takes? I want to know how long it takes and how much it costs to find out what the potential income for my guys would be. I'm thinking 2 guys with the right skills can get the job done in an efficient amount of time, but maybe I'm wrong about that.
3. What are the most important skills? Auto-mechanic skills I figure would be imperative, but maybe not. Maybe, assuming you got a good bus, that's the least essential skill. The type of thing where you could hire a guy to fix whatever and then the rest is the conversion. But I'm not sure if having those skills ties into other jobs. I've seen threads about lights (exterior I think), batteries, etc. There does seem to be a lot of questions about electrical in general so I figure having someone who got electrician training would be beneficial. Iron work? I see that a lot of this starts with framing with steel. Carpentry? Plumbing? I mean I can clearly see all of these skills are needed, but if you guys are doing these things completely on your own in some cases, then I figure if I have 2 guys with the most important skills then they can cross train to learn the couple of other things that would help.
4. How marketable are these? Those of you who are doing this as a labor of love may not know, but because you all are swapping parts, buying parts etc. I figure you might know just how popular this is so that I could figure out how lucrative it might be. With my non-mechanical skills, I figure I'd be in charge of finding all the stuff needed to do the job, decorating, marketing, and keeping the whole process moving.
This literally occurred to me last night so it's technically a "half-baked" idea. Originally, a lot of the types of businesses I thought of for the guys would have much less overhead and be more service oriented to truly get them started, but because this endeavor would be a team effort, I started to think "Go big or go home."
As a GUESS I figured it might be sold on average for $30K (some more, some less), $10K in parts (if one is thrifty) and 2 months worth of work with 2 guys making it a little over $6K each for 2 months, but this is a GUESS based on nothing. My numbers are likely way off, but I was keeping to round figures.
Anything you can offer would be appreciated. Thanks.
