The Search for a Camper Van in Canada

The past month hasn’t been all about family and friends; in fact, quite a lot of our time has been passed in offices, garages, dealerships and internet cafés.

We’ve been searching for a camper van in Canada.  And it’s been more challenging than we’d initially expected.

Choosing the Vehicle

Things started all the way back in New Brunswick.  When Bruno and I decided to ship our current camper van from Europe to North America, we knew we had made a difficult choice.  Selling Totoyaya would be easier in North America (Americans love Land Cruisers!) but finding a suitable replacement vehicle would be more difficult.  The amazing Mercedes Vario we’d picked as our next overland vehicle is almost impossible to find here – the few available all come from European travelers finishing their overland tours.  No other vehicle we knew of would check as many boxes as this Vario.

Between family visits in New Brunswick, Bruno discovered the Mitsubishi Fuso, a popular lightweight truck usually used for intra-city deliveries.  Though the Fuso is almost never a 4WD and generally offers only automatic transmission, we liked its small, economical engine (a rarity on a continent that prefers V8 and V10 engines).  It would also offer high clearance, three seats in the cabin, and a large enough chassis and cell to build the camper we’d envisioned.

A second vehicle that began to interest us more and more over time was the Ford F450 minibus.  Though the engine is not at all economical, we learned it was one of the most highly sought-after engines in North America because of its reliability and omnipresence.  This vehicle doesn’t have quite the high clearance of the Fuso, and also lacks manual transmission and 4WD, but it would be easy to drive, large enough to build our home, more affordable, and with an aesthetic that the Fuso lacked.

Finding Direction

We may have narrowed our vehicle choice down, but as we left New Brunswick we still had no real idea of the ins-and-outs of our project.  Would we be able to register the vehicle as a camper van?  How would we get license plates without a Canadian address?  What insurance options were available to us?  Would we be able to buy the materials necessary to build the interior?

Truth be told, the entire idea of designing and building our own camper van out of a truck or bus often felt like an exhaustingly overwhelming project.  In fact, even to this day, Bruno would probably just buy a regular RV and get on with things – he prefers simplicity, leisure, and travel to having the ideal home-on-wheels.  It’s more me who is really uninspired by run-of-the-mill RVs and is more attached to the idea of creating a home that expresses our personality, lifestyle, and personal flow.

It would be one thing if I were handy, of course.  Then I’d take this project by the reins rather than depending so much on Bruno’s handyman skills.  But, unfortunately for both of us, I’m only handy in a kitchen.  This project – apart from the design – is more or less on Bruno’s shoulders.

One evening in early September, camped along the St. Lawrence outside Kamouraska, we got to chatting with some locals.  When the conversation turned to our plans to find a new overland vehicle, the family mentioned New West, a Quebec City-based company that creates custom-made interiors for camper vans.  Since Bruno and I had little idea where to start our project, we decided New West was as good a place as any.

Asking for Help

And so, we went to New West to check out the work they did.  Since I wasn’t going to be much help, I agreed that we would try to outsource certain parts of the project, finances permitting.  As such, we were specifically interested in inquiring whether New West could help insulate the interior of our vehicle and install a few windows.  We found out very quickly that the company has never done this type of work except for on their own vans, but that they were open to helping us out if they could.  They’d send us a quote soon.

In the meantime, they sent us on to a company that makes custom truck cells.  We’d discussed the fact that we wanted an extension over the cabin of our truck, both for additional storage and better aerodynamics, and it appeared this company could help.  We discussed our plans with them, and asked for a quote for the extension, and also to adjust the length or height of an existing cell, because most of the cells we’d been seeing online were too long and too high.  Just for kicks, we asked the company to send us a quote for building an entirely new custom-made cell, even though we expected the quote to be beyond our budget.

(FYI, New West never got back to us, but were quoted us about $6,000CAD for make a few adjustments on an existing cell, and about $15,000CAD to build a brand-new one.)

Gathering Information

In Montreal, we received additional help from Jenn and Nico, my cousin and her life-partner.  Nico had already traveled around North America in a minibus conversion, and he sent us to the SAAQ office to answer our questions about registering a vehicle in Quebec as a camper van.  At the office, we learned that we could indeed register a truck or bus as a camper van as long as we passed through a few hoops.  But, as we discussed this plan with our family and their friends, we realized that Quebec was not the province to do this – it’s notorious for being more complicated, bureaucratic, and slow that Canada’s Anglophone provinces.  We’d be best looking into the process in Toronto, 500km west.

And so, we visited Service Canada in Toronto to ask our questions.  It took several people and a few phone calls to gather the information we needed, but eventually we learned that with an affidavit, a few interior transformations to the vehicle, a paint job, and a safety and emissions tests, we would be able to register a bus or truck as an RV.

Shopping for Vehicles

In Montreal, we had visited a moving company that used both Ford F450 minibuses and Mitsubishi Fusos, and sold off these vehicles as they upgraded.  We had spoken with a representative about the differences in their consumption and reliability, and had taken interior measurements.  We’d briefly considered the Hino, a similar vehicle to the Fuso, but eventually learned that its large engine had poor fuel economy, which was the very reason we liked the Fuso.

In Toronto, we began our vehicle search in earnest.  Initially we were most interested in the Fuso.  We visited a used truck store, but their vehicles were too costly and the chassis had quite a lot of rust.  We test-drove one Fuso (the FK, with a manual transmission) but it was a very difficult drive and its chassis, too, had loads of rust.  We stopped at another used truck store, but they had no Fusos available at that moment.

By this point, we had started learning toward the Ford minibus, despite its higher fuel consumption.  The Fuso seemed so large, and especially so high.  So we visited a company that was selling off its old F450 shuttle buses.  We got to step inside to visualize the interior layout, and we discovered that our design could work, with some modifications.  But the shuttle buses were so full of rust that, when Bruno touched a part of the chassis, a piece of it broke off!

Because Canada has harsh, snowy winters, most cities spread salt on the roads to melt the ice.  The salt, however, does major damage to vehicles, so that even vehicles claiming to be in great conditions on online ads were disgraceful in my French hubby’s eyes.  We’d spotted a minibus that had already been partially converted into a camper van by a guy about 300km south of Toronto, but when we asked for photos of his chassis (which was in “excellent condition,” he said), we saw, again, rust.  When we stopped by a garage that buys and sells school busses and minibuses, we saw, once again, that there was rust.  There, we at least got to test drive a minibus, and we got a lot of tips from the seller about what to look for and what to avoid in the world of the Ford F450, but still, the visit was fruitless.  It was early October, we were soon on our way to New York and France, and we still had no vehicle.

Moving Onto Plan B

Bruno and I had to concede that we wouldn’t likely find our new camper van in Canada.  We had been hoping to take advantage of the favourable Euro – CAD exchange rate, and expected registration and insurance to be easier here because of my Canadian citizenship, but it was not to be.   We would have to continue our search for a camper van in the USA.

And so, with winter on its way, Bruno and I will drive Totoyaya south until we reach a state that doesn’t smear salt all over its roads.  I didn’t expect our “build our own overland vehicle” project to be quite so challenging and time-consuming, but I now understand that this will likely consume most of our winter.  I sure hope it will be worth all the hard work in the end!  Wish us luck, friends!