Which is better: Class B camper van
or a small Class C RV?
We've had experience in both, and today,
I'm going to share my opinions with you.
[intro music]
Kait and I have spent a number of years
traveling and living out of Class B camper vans.
We've also spent time in a small Class C RV,
and we've toured a number of them at shows and on dealer lots.
Let me give you a little description of the Class B camper van that I'll be referring to.
This is going to be any van built on a
Ford Transit,
Mercedes Sprinter,
or Ram ProMaster chassis.
And that is the full van chassis, not a cutaway.
For the small Class C RVs,
I'm talking about RVs that are built on a cutaway chassis.
For example, there is the Ford Transit
and the E-Series cutaway chassis,
Mercedes Sprinter cutaway,
Ram ProMaster cutaway,
and there are some even built on the Chevy cutaway chassis.
But what is a cutaway chassis?
They chop off the whole box
of the van, and all you have is a cab
with a frame rail and wheels at the back.
The company then builds their own box on the back of that.
Some of these boxes will have a cab over bed or storage area,
but some don't, and some people refer to those as "B+" RVs.
All of the small Class C RVs that I'm going to be referring to today
are going to be about 25 to 24 feet or less in total length.
Now, since we all have our own opinions about what is the best,
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below
if you have a Class B or small Class C RV,
or even something else you might think is better.
Let's start with vehicle size.
Class B RVs can come anywhere from about
18 feet in total length, all the way to 24 feet.
If you go with the Mercedes Sprinter with the extended 170 chassis,
that's 24 feet long.
But you can also go with the shortest Mercedes, which is 19 and a half feet long.
On the Class C side,
Wingamm has a 17-foot kind of a "B+" Class C.
Class C RVs will go up to and well beyond 25 feet.
But again, today, we're focusing on 25 feet and less.
So the big difference between the Class Bs and the Class Cs
isn't length, because you can get a similar length between either.
It's really the width
in the size department that makes a big difference.
Class C RVs tend to be wider than Class Bs,
and it gives you a lot more room inside,
but there's also the potential for it to be taller than a Class B RV.
So you take that into consideration in
how big of a vehicle do you want to be driving around.
This leads into the drivability of the two.
It's going to be much easier to drive a smaller van.
I tell people when they ask me what it's like driving a Class B RV.
It's just like driving an SUV or a large sedan.
You're sitting up higher,
it feels about the same size, and you can park it in a standard parking spot.
Now, when you're driving a small Class C RV,
with that extra width, height, and length,
it's a lot more to get around a corner, tighter in parking areas,
and you typically can't fit within a single parking spot.
You're going to have to park at the end of a parking lot,
if you're going to a grocery store or something like that,
and kind of plan ahead when you go into tighter areas.
Most of the Class C RVs are going to have duallies on the back.
There's more there, and there's also going to be more maintenance with that,
with those six wheels rather than just four.
Along with the increased length with the Class C RVs,
you're also going to have a longer hangover in the back of the RV,
which means you're going to be prone to dragging
if you come out of a steep driveway, for example,
or if you're trying to go off the beaten path,
you're going to have to be very careful about your ground clearance.
Drivability and size between the two.
The Class B is going to be smaller and more nimble.
Class C is going to be larger, a lot less nimble,
but it's going to have more room inside for you and your things.
All this leads into livability.
The Class C definitely wins out in this regard.
There's more room, and it's much more livable for you,
your partner, and if you have a family.
With a Class C RV, a lot of them out there have dry baths.
That means you have a separate shower from your toilet and your sink.
Some even have these in separate rooms
or areas of the RV, which is nice, because someone can be
taking a shower, and someone can be using the toilet at the same time.
There's also larger living areas. So if you like to have friends over,
or you have a family and you want to spend time inside the RV,
it's much easier to do that than it is in a Class B RV.
The beds in Class C RVs also tend to be much larger.
So, if you're a taller person and you don't want to be trying to squeeze between the walls of your van,
a Class C RV might be the way to go.
With a Class B being smaller,
despite not being as livable,
we always say, "We don't live in our camper;
we live out of our camper."
The Class b allows you to get further out there than a small Class C RV would.
Despite the fact that you might not have as much room inside,
you might be able to find more room outside.
To increase livability in a small Class C RV,
some even come with slide-outs.
Now that does add to complexity and the number of things that could possibly go wrong.
But sometimes, a slide-out has the ability to almost
double the interior space that you have available to live in.
This is nice if you're staying at a campground or RV park,
and you're going to be there for an extended amount of time.
Now, in terms of the livability of a Class B camper van,
you're going to have smaller beds.
So, in our bed, my head and feet are just
almost touching the walls of either side of the van.
Bathrooms tend to be smaller if you have one at all,
and most of them are going to be wet baths.
This means your toilet and shower and sink are all in the same enclosed room.
In our campervan, we actually don't even have an enclosed bathroom.
What we have is a shower that
falls out of a cabinet,
and you take a shower in the van, water goes into a grey tank.
And then we have a small portable toilet.
Now this is very different from a small Class C RV with a dedicated
bathroom, black tank, and all of those fun amenities.
A lot of small Class C RVs these days
are also coming with front seats that swivel around.
So you can now make those part of your living room as well.
In terms of how many people you can bring with you,
this all depends.
I've seen some Class B camper vans out there from custom builders
that have seating for five, six people.
But we just saw a small Class C RV today
that can seat eight people.
I don't know if you're going to be able to sleep all eight people in that small Class C RV,
but there's no reason you can't tow a small trailer behind you.
Class C RVs also have larger tanks in general.
They'll have a bigger black tank, a bigger grey tank, a bigger freshwater,
which means you could potentially stay off-grid for longer than you can in a Class B RV.
Most Class C RVs do come with a black tank.
So if you're looking for a cassette toilet or something else,
a Class B RV might be the way for you.
In terms of storage, Class C is the winner.
Not only will you have more places inside the RV to store your things,
but a lot of small Class C RVs have exterior storage bays
where you can put things that you may not want to take inside the camper,
like your black hose.
Class B RVs don't necessarily skimp in storage though.
With our Class B camper van,
we have an entire garage area in the back
that we can configure to however we want to use it.
And it aids in the usefulness of the vehicle, because
we can use it like a cargo van when we're not camping out of it.
In terms of power systems,
we've found that small Class C RVs
tend to have less battery power
than Class B camper vans do.
So a lot of times, in a small Class C RV,
you'll find they come with generators
and a very small battery bank with a small inverter.
With Class B camper vans,
many today are coming with full lithium packages,
so much so that camper vans like ours
can run the entire AC and everything else in the camper
off the battery bank, never having to plug into power.
It's just two ways of looking at what kind of power system do you want in your camper.
If you have a generator and you don't want to use it,
you can always remove that generator and replace it with a lithium battery system
or something else to support your needs.
Small Class C RVs also have bigger roofs,
so you have more place to put solar panels to charge your batteries.
Which of the two is more multipurpose?
Class B camper van wins that hands down.
You can use it as a daily driver.
As I mentioned before, it fits into a standard parking spot, or at least most do.
That means it's easy to go grocery shopping with it,
take kids to practice, or even to school.
We've taken ours on trips to the lumber store, and we can put lumber in the back.
It's that easy.
With a small Class C RV,
unfortunately, I haven't seen any with back barn doors like a van that open,
so it's more difficult to use the interior space for something other than camping.
You can still take them to the store, it's just going to be a lot more difficult to park,
but they'd be great for taking the kids to soccer practice, because
you can hang out in the RV while your kids are doing their thing.
In regards to full-time living,
I think the livability that I mentioned earlier really comes into play.
Do you need something with a dedicated bathroom?
Do you need something with those storage bays and a larger bed?
If not, full-time living might be easier out of a camper van,
because it's going to be a lot more nimble and easier to get into places.
What we found is a lot of national parks and
places that you want to go and travel to,
are going to have limited parking areas that are going to make it difficult
if you're trying to go through with your small Class C RV.
That said, there are a lot of people living in them full-time, and
they would be great for that.
The nice thing is, some of them have bigger towing capacities.
So you can bring along a toad or a "towed car" behind you,
like a Jeep or something like that.
Because a lot of those small Class C RVs
have the towing capacity to be able to take one along.
When we started full-timing, we started in a Class A RV.
It was just under 30 feet long, and we've often said,
had we known then what we know now about small Class C RVs,
we probably would have started with a small Class C RV,
which would have made our experience on the road
much better, because that big Class A
was really difficult to get in and out of some places.
Here's my favorite one. Off-road capability.
A lot of vans out there are
specced out from the factory to go-off road,
especially some of the Mercedes Sprinters with the larger tires, lift kits.
They're even coming with lockers these days.
But that said, I've seen a number
of small Class C RVs with lift kits and four-wheel drive systems,
especially on the Ford E-Series chassis.
And you can take those things quite a few places.
The biggest drawback is going to be the width of the camper,
as well as the weight and the height.
So it's going to make it difficult to go through
narrow trails and kind of off-camber situations.
If you have one of these off-road Class Cs,
I would love to know about it. Let us know in the comments below, because
I think they're one of the coolest styles of RVs.
You have this big camper with off-road tires and a four-wheel drive system.
That's cool.
Price.
There are small Class C RVs out there
with price tags under 70,000 dollars.
Now, while you might not be getting the quality or components
of a higher-end RV,
you can still get in relatively less
compared to a lot of the Class B camper vans out there.
A big reason for this price difference between Class Bs and small Class Cs
is the chassis.
A cutaway chassis costs significantly less than a full van chassis.
Also, going back to the power systems.
It's less expensive to put in a generator
than it is a 12-kilowatt, you know, battery system.
That 12-kilowatt battery system could cost 30,000, 40,000 dollars
just to put in the van.
So there are big price differences
depending on the type of options that you're looking for in your RV.
So going back to the question that I posed at the beginning of the video,
which is best: a Class B camper van or small Class C RV?
That really depends on what you need that camper to do.
Do you have a lot of people that you're bringing with you? Do you need more seats?
Do you need more room for livability?
Do you need to have a dedicated bathroom,
or can you do with a portable toilet and a dropdown shower?
My advice is always sit down
and write out all of your must-haves for the RV that is perfect for you,
and then go shopping based on those must-haves,
and there will always be compromises.
But you should be able to find something that checks most of your boxes.
Of course, then there are also the nice-to-haves,
which, if you can get as many of those as possible in the camper that you buy, all the better.
I hope this was helpful.
And if you'd like to learn more about small Class Cs,
Class B camper vans, and a lot of the other content that we've produced,
head on over to our website at weretherussos.com,
and we will see you next time. Thank you so much for watching. Bye.
My second book, Tales From the Open Road:
The Adventures and Misadventures of RV Living,
is now available for sale on Amazon.
Read all about the ups and downs of our first year and a half living on the road full-time.