How Escape Campervans Reinvented the Road Trip

The Birth of the Campervan

Turns out someone else was wondering the same thing all the way back in 2009: Rob Mewton of Escape Campervans. The Kiwi transplant was familiar with campervans thanks to the company's presence in his native New Zealand, but as he drove up the California coast, he realized, "there were no campervans in America and I couldn't figure out why!"

Growing up in New Zealand, Rob was an avid surfer in search of an easy way to chase the best waves. He "started out by sleeping on a board bag and then a tent and then in the back of a station wagon with a mattress and then finally graduated to a van with a mattress bed setup and a cooler and a little camp stove and that's where the idea [for campervans] started", he explains.

Because there was no tent to set up or breakdown and plenty of storage for everything you'd need, hopping from one great surf spot to the next was as easy as climbing in and driving away. That's the ease that Escape Campervans fleet strives to maintain. In Rob's words, "We give you everything you need and nothing you don't."

Campervan vs. RV

This might seem like a no-brainer at first. After all, isn't an RV just a fancier, nicer campervan? Not quite.

"For me, 100% it's just that a campervan is far less stressful than an RV," says Rob, "When you drive in downtown San Francisco, you can park right on the street." Try doing that with an RV! He also points out that with RVs you have to worry a lot about low-hanging branches, bridge and parking garage restrictions, and you have limited campsites you can use. None of this is true for a campervan.

Campervans can park just as easily in a standard campsite as they can in one designed for RVs and their more compact size means driving one is probably a good deal simpler than getting used to the enormous heft of an RV.

The other thing Rob points out? Campervans keep you closer to nature than an RV. There's no room for a TV, there's no shower, and while you can eat inside, you'll have more room picnicking outdoors. Basically, it all goes back to getting "everything you need, and nothing you don't." Because the biggest perk of every campervan rental shouldn't be the bells and whistles; it should be the freedom to roam wherever the road takes you.

A Travel Company, Not a Rental Car Company

When you rent a campervan from Escape Campervans, it's pretty obvious they're not your standard rental company. I mean, how many rental cars have crazy custom paint jobs featuring everything from the scenery of Sedona's red rocks to enormous, hungry fish painted on the sides? When I asked Rob why this was a standard feature of their rentals, he said as part of the company, he knows just how cool campervans are and what great experiences you can have in them, "but when you look at the outside and it's just a white van, it's really boring!"

So the Escape Campervans team turned to local artists to make every single van unique. Now, not only do they all feature beautiful artwork, they have names, too. "I probably have about 100 favorites! They're all hand painted, all original artwork," says Rob. It helps people connect with each other on their road trips, and it even helps them bond with their ride. "We've had renters tattoo [the vans] on their bodies! Nobody's doing that with their Hertz rental car," he adds, and it's pretty hard to argue with him there.

But their unique approach to the biz is more than paint-job deep. Customers get an "escape plan" with their rental, too, which is an incredible collection of tips and suggestions from the staff that extends far beyond just how to plug your iPhone into the van's speakers. Instead, it will help you figure out what to do if your campsite is full, point out hot springs along your route, tell you the prettiest lookout points, and more. "We try not to be a rental car company, we try to be a travel company."

And that's Escape Campervans in a nutshell. It's not just a place to rent a vehicle, it's a whole new way to travel that actually understands that getting there is half the fun.

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