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Our booth at the TinyFest Festival at the Alameda Fairgrounds last weekend, where we sold books and had a great time meeting new friends.
At the booth, we introduced our just-published Rolling Homes book and we sold a lot of copies. Everyone seems to love it. For one thing, the timing — with all the new vans, trucks, trailers and other nomadic vehicles on the roads now.
Two of the contributors to the book showed up and parked their rigs next to our booth: Ben Bloom’s homemade redwood camper shell on his Toyota Tacoma truck and Paul Elkins’ bike-pulled solar- and wind-powered trailer. Both of these generated a lot of interest, with a steady stream of inquiring fair goers
On the first day, maybe 20 people came into the booth and thanked us for the books through the years. Really gratifying.
Tags: books, campers, camping, gypsy wagon, house bus, house truck, nomad, nomadlife, off-road, off-the-grid, on the road, roadtrip, rolling home, tiny homes on the move, tiny houses, tinyhome, tinyhouse, trailers, travel, vehicles Hi Lloyd!
I love your website and look forward to each new posting.
Here is an interesting “trailer” I saw a while back, parked on a residential street in Santa Barbara, that I thought would make you smile!
–Louis (Andaloro)
Having always been attracted to compact living spaces on wheels and having been stranded several times in VW Westfalias, I decided to start off with a basic solid vehicle with reliability, safety and small size in mind. The challenge of fitting as many desirable features in a limited space attracted me greatly. Found this 2017 Ford Transit Connect passenger van with 16K miles for 20K dollars here in the Bay Area.
Essential for me was being able to stand up and a sense of spaciousness. Hence the rear-hinged pop-top, purchased from England. Cutting it to size was a bit of a pain, a local welding shop made the strengthening frame, the rest was pretty straight forward. A single flex solar panel and a ceiling fan just fit on the 6″ top. The bed slides forwards and backwards to max 6′3″, while still allowing standing space to cook and stretch. A 200ah battery and 1K watt inverter is sufficient for blender, 150-watt space heater, movie screen etc. Slightly larger size tires and a yet to be installed 1″ lift kit gives it a bit more clearance. The van took 8 months to complete, gets 32 mpg at 65 mph on level road. Inadvertently the additional weight gives it a smooth ride while retaining enough power. The six speakers and good seats makes this a perfect rig for my travel needs and stealth camping. My pup Bella agrees!
Rolf Pot
Santa Cruz
Note: Rolf’s bus “Old Red” is featured in our new book Rolling Homes on pp. 204–205.
I shot this in San José del Cabo about 15 years ago. You have to know and love the real Los Cabos — the people, the tropical desert, the ranchos, the beaches — to appreciate how perfect this bug is for the area.
Some interesting insight relating to our new book Rolling Homes. (Due in bookstores in July.) In the introduction, I point out that we don’t have many nomadlanders (people that are “houseless, not homeless”), nor do we have many of the #vanlife crowd that make a living as influencers.
Article in Time Magazine by Annabel Gutterman, February 15, 2021
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Bob Wells discussed the community of modern nomads, and why people are increasingly drawn to the movement. “If the Great Recession was a crack in the system, Covid and climate change will be the chasm,” he said. This lifestyle is not to be confused with “#vanlife” — a hashtag that populates Instagram feeds and accompanies photos of largely younger people traveling in vans. Bruder (author of Nomadland) believes #vanlife is more of a brand than a movement. “There are people of all ages who are living in vans and then there are people doing #vanlife,” Bruder says. “For everybody who can actually make a living or enough to eat and put gas in the tank on the road as an influencer, there are thousands of people who would probably like to be doing that and cannot.
www.time.com/5938982/nomadland-true-story
Shameless Commerce Dept.: Rolling Homes is available for pre-order with a 20% discount: www.shelterpub.com/building/rolling-homes
We will ship as soon as we receive books, hopefully mid-July.
Please note: other books can’t be combined with pre-orders.
This is our best book in years!
Parked down by beach a few days ago.
Would be perfect in Baja.
Here is his early review of our forthcoming book, Rolling Homes:
www.housetrucks.org/lloyd-kahns-next-book
Here is home page: www.housetrucks.org
Johnny Vang built this unique camper, which is featured in our forthcoming book, Rolling Homes. It’s an ingenious design, where it does not appear that anyone is living within. Johnny just wrote, saying he needs to sell it. It’s a 2004 Chevy Silverado with an LM7 5.3-liter, 8-cylinder Vortec engine with 301,000 miles on it. He says it gets 15mpg at 70 miles per hour. When I asked him what shape the motor was in, he replied: “Motor still runs strong. Just got to add a quart of oil ever 1500 miles or so.”
In my opinion, it’s a rare bargain, at $3900. He can be contacted at johnnyturbogt@gmail.com
Got this email with old photos from Claudia Smigelski today, it referred to the camper, which was for sale for $1525 on eBay in 2011 (in LA, of course) — which I had posted on my blog.
Hello Lloyd!
I’m unsure if your the same Lloyd with the 1956 Cadillac camper, but if you are thanks for posting the photo! It reminds me of one I bought many moons ago in Arizona and brought to NY.
Wish I still had it! What happened to the 1956 Cadillac Camper?
Thanks, Claudia
Our forthcoming book, Rolling Homes, is now completed (but not yet sent to printers). We’ve got an overflow of vehicles, which I’ll start posting here from time to time.
These links from David Wills:
