Is your last name Partridge?
If it runs, and you can drive it to a scrap yard, you should take the $1000 and scrap it. The parts will be worth a lot by themselves, and the you should get more than $1000 for any metal that isn’t valuable as a part (maybe not if you’ve sold the engine, but then you would have received a lot for that). If it’s old enough, the parts may have no value, but the metal still will. You can’t lose on the deal, unless you fail to get rid of it as soon as possible.
As an alternative, if you have the space for it, and need a little outbuilding, or even extension on your home, it would work fine, so you could just keep the body and sell or scrap the parts. I’ve considered a couple of times purchasing a train car diner as an extension to my house (I’m weird). A full size bus could serve the same role.
What could you do with it?
You could start a Party Bus business with it. Put in a decent sound system and rent it out with a driver for around $100 to $150 bucks an hour. Allow people to bring their own coolers with booze on it. Negotiate arrangements with local clubs (strip or otherwise) that would allow your patrons to get in without paying the cover charge. Win Win for you and the clubs.
Put a real route number from your town on it, drive the usual route and pick up passengers, then partway through the journey, turn onto the interstate and announce you will be diverting to Florida. (If you live in Florida, make it Minnesota. Or Tijuana.)
I would think the service/maintenance costs would be astronomical. If you’re well off financially and want a hobby, go for it.
I’m for merging the party bus and car pool folks.
Rent it out to your local sports fans going to the game. They can party and don’t have to park.
You drive them to the arena/stadium and pick up after. Or, stay and have the typical tailgate thing. The college fans are nuts. I’d get a deposit.
What could go wrong?
I work with several transit museums, some of which own, or have members who own, transit buses. One acquaintance of mine for years had a “bus yard” out in the country with twelve vintage buses stashed out back. Most of them got “parted out” for parts for museum buses after he died.
You fail to specify whether the bus in question is a school bus, a transit bus, an intercity bus, a tour coach, or what. It pretty much doesn’t matter; the advice I give will apply across the board.
On top of all the other factors mentioned above–cost of fuel, driving training/experience, cost of tires, cost of engine parts, etc.–let’s throw in insurance. Affordable insurance is available provided you register the vehicle as an antique, vintage, or whatever “out” the state/province gives you on licensing. But said vehicles are restricted in mileage they can accumulate, and/or in age. If your vehicle is not old enough or you expect to drive it more often than, say, once a month, forget it. Most larger vehicles like this will only get insured in a commercial vehicle setting, which is FAR more expensive than normal auto insurance, for good reason.
One other thing that will hit you big-time: if you ever break down (let’s be real and say “when you break down”), you’ll have to call a truck towing company, not your average tow truck. Think cubic dollars again.
The only way to justify something like this is something like, for example, an “ultimate tailgate party” bus, set up with kegerators, grills, etc. This has been done successfully at many college and pro sports stadium events. But at this stage of the game, you are, indeed, talking commercial-scale dollars, not a whimsical “I can drive to the supermarket in this” deal.
I have also seen some serious kit-bashing of former school buses into hay haulers in the Western states. Basically, you cut down everything behind the first two rows of seats to the floor and turn it into a flatbed truck. Additional welding and reinforcement will be needed, and I think the few I’ve seen operate under farm-truck provisions in state laws. This is something you could do if you’re driving rural roads in Montana or Arizona, not down Broadway or Main Street. And you’re still burning a heck of a lot of fuel.
Finally, I understand scrap prices have diminished in the past year because of the depressed Chinese economy. I’ve heard reports that scrappers are now offering as little as 50% of what they were a year or so ago.
Basically, buying a bus like this is in the same order as buying a vintage British sports car or motorcycle or Airstream. You’re joining a cult, not getting a bargain, and that cult will quickly consume as much of your time and money as you let it.
As an owner of many vintage British cars, motorcycles, and 1 Airstream, I resent your use of the word “cult”. We are merely unique collectors of overlooked and undervalued examples of mobile art and history. It’s not a gang, it’s a club!
All Hail British Leyland, Miguel Galluzzi, and Wally Byam!
Paint it jet black. Darken all the windows. Throw some satellite dishes, antennas, and various pipes and do hickies on the roof.
Paint some random collection of white letters that appear to be an acronym for some gubment thing.
Gather up a few friends. Make sure you all dress in Back to the Future hazmat type garb.
Stop in random subdivisions, have all your friends jump out, appearing to take soil samples, various geiger counter measurments, scribbling a few notes and grabbing a few quick photos. Make sure someone in the neighborhood sees you.
Jump back in and dash off quickly.
Lots of folks convert busses into RVs but they mostly use retired school busses. Cheaper to acquire, cheaper to run, less stuff to throw away when it’s being stripped out. They got a forum, http://www.skoolie.net/
Oh my fucking GAWD!
That would be awesome! You should totally do it!
I would:
-make the the front half for passengers, and the back half into a studio where I sleep and park under a bridge!
-paint it rainbow to attract hippies, go in the woods and get high as shit!
-remove the seats and add some stripper poles, hire some hoes, drive around and charge people for looking at them. Boy I would be a rich bitch!
-paint it camouflage so people will think it’s associated with the military, so you can park it anywhere you want. Never have to park at the back of a parking lot.
-turn it into an ice cream truck. Send it through an affluent suburb and play the ice cream music at 2am. It would strike terror because they would think there’s drug deals going on!
-just be an otherwise obnoxious asshole with a huuuuuge vehicle. Install a booming system and always play Ludicrous’ “move bitch, get out the way!”
And if anybody asks what you are doing …?
You say–
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Have you had any strange sensations in your spleen, lately? Never-mind, forget I said that.”
That forum (on school bus conversion) is fun to read.
For even more impractability - I present a converted HEMTT
http://www.allcrawl.com/read.php?10,469
http://globalxvehicles.com/under-construction/1984-osh-kosh-hemtt-8-x-8/
There are HUMVEES covereted to limos - why not a HEMTT?
Brian
These 2 suggestions are 7 kinds of awesome.
Also put some kind of revolving rack on top, loaded with what looks like missiles of some kind. And some kind dish antenna that looks like radar, and have the antenna and the missiles rotating in synch the same direction. Oh, and a gun turret of some kind would be a nice touch.
And just to mess with people’s heads, put the Batman bat symbol on the sides, so people will scratch their heads and wonder if Batman drives a bus. Always wear a mask when you’re driving.