Why you should buy a quality used caravan

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There are new caravans that you’ll wait a year or so for, due to COVID-19 driven component shortages; there are many used caravans that you’ll find on caravancampingsales whose prices continue to rise as demand outstrips supply; then there’s a ‘third’ way: a ‘Good as new’ older caravan.

Do your homework by snooping around your local caravan park and you’ll come up with a short list of van brands that have weathered the years well. As a starting point, look at the brands designed to go off-road, as these will generally be sturdier: brands like Queensland’s Bushtracker, Kedron and Sunland and Victoria’s Trakmaster and Evernew. They are long-established brands and they have survived for good reasons.

For start, a lot fewer Australian roads were sealed a few years ago, so vans had to be built tougher to last. Another reason is that in those days, many caravan manufacturers were also caravanners, so they refined their own caravans and passed on the improvements to their customers.

Vans from these makers will generally have sturdier chassis; their wall frame uprights and roof cross-braces will be more closely spaced; they may use dovetail joints instead of glue and rivets for their cabinetry, and they will probably have better exterior stone protection for secure off-road travel.

For these reasons, they will probably command higher used prices than regular on-road caravans of a similar vintage and will therefore justify the cost of a cosmetic or component upgrade if you intend to keep and enjoy it for another five or 10 years.

What many of these vans won’t have is a modern trailing arm independent suspension system, extensive fresh water storage, or the latest in battery and solar panel technology to make them self-sufficient off the grid.

As for inverters to run your coffee pod machine, forget it. For a start they didn’t have coffee pods until recently and people never really thought of making their vans as comfortable as their homes. They welcomed the difference.

And as for appliances, today’s fridges are far more efficient; microwaves are cost effective; induction electric cooktops are cheap at Aldi and the availability of awnings has seen many people cook outdoors on Webers and the like.

A browse through caravancampingsales will get you started:

Around $50,00 will get you a 20 year old Bushtracker;

From $35-45,000 should buy you a 10 year old Evernew;

From $35,000 up will get you to 10-15 year old Trakmaster.

All of the above well-known caravans should give you another 10 years of good travel and still be worth close to what you pay for it if serviced and maintained properly.

Of course you can buy new, or near-new ‘off road’; caravans for similar money, but what will they be worth after 10-20 years of travelling?

So, how much more should you spend to bring it up to date?

Victoria's Halen Vans has a good idea, as its founder Jason Francis was formerly Production Manager of Trakmaster caravans from its early days in the mid-1990s before branching out on his own.

With Trakmaster production currently in limbo following its purchase from Ararat agricultural equipment manufacturer Gason at the outset of the COVID pandemic, Halen Vans has become a default servicing and maintenance facility for many Melbourne owners given Francis’s personal connection with owners of many Trakmasters.

“Because these vans were built in a traditional way and were expected to last for at least 30 years, they represent good second-hand value and are worth investing some money in to upgrade,” he said.

Typical things that Halen Vans does include external re-cladding (in stucco-painted corrugated aluminium), upgrading kitchens, fitting internal bathrooms in larger vans and updating battery systems and installing solar power to give the older vans a new lease of life ‘off the grid’.

Francis says he has a number of customers spend $20,000 or more upgrading solid older vans of many makes, with the expectation of enjoying the benefits over the next decade or so.

Depending on what you buy and spend, you may get all your money back, given the rising prices of used caravans and the expected price increases for quality new caravans when component supplies and skilled labour allow production to get back up to speed.

Related:

Should you restore an old caravan