hey everybody eric here from nomadic fanatic it is a day of four out here at the schooly swarm
in the ozarks first annual uh as you can see some people have left even though this is technically
an eight-day event you can stay for as long as you want you can come in at the the front
end of it the tail end of it you can come in for the day just to hang out for a little bit
or like some of us you can uh try to camp the entire eight days and i know i have lots of
water storage capacity so um i'm getting solar now so that's a good thing uh i am going to share
something a little special with you in this video we're going to do something a little different
talk about my my personal schooly school bus search yeah all right so what i'm going to
show you now here this is for fun well actually it's for entertainment and educational reasons i
want to walk you through my real life experiences of trying to buy two different buses here at the
swarm and uh just so you can kind of see how my brain works and you are not going to believe these
two buses that i looked at okay first of all it's no secret that i've been looking for a school bus
or as they call it a schooly uh to purchase and then convert and build my own rv from the floor
up and build it and design it better than any manufacturer i feel can ever build an rv that's my
goal i've been talking about that for a long time finding that perfect schoolie has been quite an
interesting battle luckily i've been in no rush i ended up getting vanna white the camper van to
kind of hold me over for a little bit i built that out as much as i could except for solar and now
i'm back at the swarm with robert my diesel mechanic friend with me and it was time to just
buckle down and search so things have changed since i started this
search but four days ago i had decided on which bus i was looking for and it's a very small
24 foot just to give you some reference here i'm going with cummins and allison i'm going with the
the bluebird front nose i'll show you i'm gonna show you a picture right here okay so this bus
is from an auction uh purple wave yeah i started with an auction here but but hear me out as you
can see it's a very short bus here one of the cool things about this bus though is that it's still
a common it's 5.9 diesel cummins it's still got the allison transmission um this particular model
has a flat floor that's right there's no wheel wells inside so if you're building a custom rv
this is like the holy grail of of those because there's no wheel wells to work around as you can
probably see from this particular ad it looks like it's louisiana department of corrections emphasis
on looks like again i'm not the type of person who would bid on anything without looking at it first
okay and with many of these you're able to contact the seller set up an arrangement come test drive
it and check it out and of course that was my next move the auction was ending in about 16 hours and
i got permission to come up there and take a look at it the the bid was currently at 2 800 so my
bid my next bid would have been 2 900 on this particular bus and i thought that we were right
there where you know the price range was probably right for the amount of miles how many miles only
58 000 miles on on this however however here's what happens robert and i drive nearly an hour
and a half away we go look at this and of course everything that's wrong with this is not in the
pictures the rust problems the floors completely tore up there is no skylight on one of the windows
it's completely gone we have no idea how long it's been raining inside you can't even see that
from the pictures there is no it's missing the skylight completely um a bunch of rust there's
a bunch of damage on the passenger side there's also a big old dent on the front bumper on the
front passenger side up there and so we're looking at it and pretty much five minutes into it i said
yeah it's not for me robert okay then robert says i don't know i might still be interested in this
robert's a real sociable guy so he sees someone on the property just uh happens to be a police
officer from that city walking his canine puppy and he said hey sir we were looking on this it's
one of the ones that's uh on the option for purple wave do you know the history of it
and at that time the officer decided to open up and give us a little bit of information he says
yeah we got this from uh louisiana it was featured in a tv series actually you may have heard of ncis
yeah i guess they took it off a jump and flipped it over on its side
used it as a prop and then they wanted to get rid of it so we got it we gutted it because we wanted
all the windows and all the electronics and the cages for our prisoners and uh we're selling it
this bus was on its side check this out
he's from new orleans to charleston traveling northbound at approximately 8 30 a.m
crossed over the double yellow into a point of impact
rolled once landed here so it wasn't actually until robert and i got back to camp that we were
able to find the episode to look at the videos and the pictures and stuff that you just saw
but it definitely surprised me how much was left out of this ad and how how creepy and scary it
is that i almost bid 2 900. as you can see from this ad we'll take a close look here 16 hours
later this ended up selling for 7 810 plus a 10 commission to purple wave somebody is very upset
i we never even test drove the thing we never fired it up don't really care at that point
you never know what is for sale out there guys if there's absolutely any way to possibly top that
right okay so yesterday robert and i are still looking at bluebird tc2000 models i came across
this one here this was actually listed 18 weeks ago marshfield is 30 minutes away from here uh
7 500 almost the same price that that other one sold for and as you can see it doesn't look like a
school bus it looks like a church bus or something there's not a whole lot of information except for
the model number the engine's right and everything else looks good we called him up i said hey we
want to come test drive this i'm bringing my buddy mechanic and we're going to come test drive this
is that okay to do that yeah here's my address come on down all right with 30 minutes out we get
there i didn't actually see anything wrong with the outside of the bus robert did mention that
there was some rust spots that um needed immediate attention needed to be fixed immediately before
they grew and were cancerous on the rust issue when we got in there it was very difficult for the
owner to start the bus up it did eventually start he said it was cold but you knew we were coming
so oh that's not the worst of it though i said all right go can we
at least take it around the block and see what it and see what it sounds like
oh actually it doesn't drive right now we're not really sure why the bus doesn't move
the bus doesn't move how are you gonna
how are you gonna sell it how are you how are you gonna get it off your property
how are we gonna buy the bus you didn't say it doesn't move no i said in my ad it runs
so you're asking 7 500 and you want me to
tow this off your property and figure out why it doesn't move
that's not even the worst of it though on the drive back i get a text message from
the guy remember we were at 7 500. i get a text message on the way back that says
actually man i talked to the wife we'll take 1500 right now if you get rid of it
there's your sign that that's the problem not only that but also the fact that this is he's
been trying to sell it for 17 weeks and no matter what he refuses to disclose the most important
information of all that the thing doesn't even drive when i got back to schooly swarm last
night guys i um i was in a bad mood i was grumpy i was upset i talked to michelle the owner of the
place and that kind of i showed a lot of raw emotions about like why can't people be honest
what is going on with the schooly community and just sellers in general that just does this not
make you just terrified to ever purchase anything that's for sale again how is anyone going to buy
that bus if it doesn't move off his property it's very strange to me now back up because that's not
the point of this video i'm having an awesome time here however i had thought somewhere in the back
of my mind that this was going to be the time now that i'm with a diesel mechanic who knows buses
and is going to help me find the perfect bus to build that i was gonna get it i was
gonna be able to park it at robert's house and then come back later but i was finally
gonna be able to get it and secure it and uh i don't think that's gonna happen here as we
only have a few more days here at schooly swarm however everything happens for a reason right
these just weren't meant to be right and now actually i am no longer necessarily
only looking for a short tc2000 bus i'm also now opening up my options to getting a diesel
pusher with an 8.3 cummins motor a diesel pusher that way the engine's in the back so it's quieter
and less hot while you're driving i'm also looking at possibly buying one from the south like arizona
texas or possibly even florida where it has ac built in so that when you're driving
the back is getting ac from the driving motor and then you can go to solar when you get parked
and stuff like that so my main thing here is i'm not in a rush i want to get the right bus
and that could happen at any moment from here till the next decade okay but be very very
very careful when buying a bus online because nothing is what it seems and it seems like
everyone out there is completely a hundred percent dishonest and scary okay this uh
anyway was that entertaining pretty crazy right i almost bought two horrible buses
oh my gosh do your research don't be in a rush and ask lots and lots of questions yeah yeah i lost a
part on my traxxas max here so she's currently out of commission until i make a little repair there
on that guy still got my crawler though this is funny this is like tara's new spot i have no idea
what's so unique about this one corner maybe just the fact that since she's been in this rv
this has this slide has never been out before so that particular spot where she's at right here
she's never been able to physically lay there when the slides in so maybe that's why she's
enjoying it so much she's also been digging out some like crazy things from underneath here from
the previous owners like kids toys and stuff i've just been throwing them in the garbage a little
hair bands and stuff she plays with them it's like whole new experiences under there huh girl
you cutie and then jackstermaxter the lickster the big guy yeah you want to tell everybody
how you behaved and brought jack style from movie night last night and uh he threw a little cat fit
i mean we were hissing and growling and threatening to bite dad you just
you had an episode yeah we all have them i know but you had a bad episode last night so guess what
you're not coming out to movie night tonight no you're gonna sit here and
think about cat things and everything else you did okay i love you though you're a good boy
not sure if i showed the view from my uh back window here really pretty huh the woods the bushes
the jungle whatever really nice location here for swarm in the ozarks lots of green grass yeah you
can see there there was probably a lot of grass they had to cut right before the event somebody
said something about 40 acres of grass they cut for it and across from me we still got dana and
steve and the kids from full tiny house and uh robert's next door and his bus i'm not saying we
won't go look at another bus while we're here it's just it's crazy how those things work out you know
but yeah really nice property here really good location and the weather has cooperated
amazingly lately so thanks for joining me guys jax tara and i will see you in the next video bye guys
hmm