The American shops that publish a lead time quote between 4 days and 10 weeks of shop time. Almost nobody waits that long for keys. The build is one stage of five, and the other four, design, the queue, the chassis and the paperwork, are where the months nobody planned for go. Here is the whole calendar.
The short answer
- Of the 27 American shops in our directory, 4 publish a lead time: Contravans from 4 to 6 days on modular work, Oasis Campervans at 3 to 4 weeks, Off Highway Van at 6 to 8 weeks and Vertical Vans at 8 to 10 weeks.
- Shop time is the weeks your van is on the floor. Calendar time starts when the deposit clears and includes the queue, which is usually the longer half.
- A full custom commission is a design process before it is a build, and the drawing stage runs for weeks before anyone cuts metal.
- Ordering a chassis rather than buying one from dealer stock can add months, and no builder controls that clock.
- Buying a van that already exists is the only route that removes the wait, and it costs you specification instead.
How long a van conversion takes
Just 4 American shops in our directory publish a turnaround. Contravans in Arvada, Colorado turns modular builds around in 4 to 6 days. Oasis Campervans in Buena Vista quotes 3 to 4 weeks on a minivan. Off Highway Van in Salt Lake City quotes 6 to 8 weeks, which is short for a $165,000 to $245,000 aluminum build. Vertical Vans, also in Salt Lake City, quotes 8 to 10 weeks on builds from $35,000 to $95,000.
The other 23 quote per project. Brooklyn Campervans states only that its Sprinters are built by commission, and Peace Vans has been quoting per project out of Seattle since 2011. That is not evasion. A shop drawing a van from nothing cannot name a duration before it knows what it is drawing.
| Build type | Shop time | Shops that publish a number |
|---|---|---|
| Partial or modular work | 4 to 6 days | Contravans, from 4 to 6 days on modular builds |
| A removable cabinet kit | Days | Z2Overland, kits from $18,000; the van goes back to being a van in an afternoon |
| A minivan conversion | 3 to 4 weeks | Oasis Campervans, $12,000 to $30,000 |
| A package or semi-custom build | 6 to 10 weeks | Off Highway Van 6 to 8 weeks, Vertical Vans 8 to 10 weeks |
| A full custom commission | Not published | Brooklyn Campervans builds by commission, Advanced RV engineers each vehicle individually |
The blank in the bottom row is the honest state of the market at the top of it. What varies across that table is not how fast people work. It is how much van is being built, and whether the design existed before you called.
Shop time and calendar time are two different numbers
Every figure above is shop time: the weeks your van is on the floor with somebody working on it. Your own clock starts when the deposit clears and stops when you drive away. The gap between those two measures is where nearly all of the frustration in this industry lives, and it is rarely anybody lying to you.
A shop with an 8 week build and a 7 month book hands over the keys 9 months after the deposit. Both numbers are true. Only one of them gets quoted on the phone, because it is the one the shop controls.
Wait and price move together, which is why the busiest shops rarely discount. A full book is the clearest signal a shop has that its number is too low, and the quote that comes back in a busy year reflects the queue as much as the specification. A shorter wait and a lower price tend to arrive together, from the same shop, in the same email.
From deposit to keys, a package build
Total5 to 14 months, deposit to keys
The chassis line runs alongside the queue when the shop orders early and after it when nobody ordered until your slot opened. Ask which of those two is happening on your build, because the answer is worth up to 6 months.
What each stage actually takes
Design and specification, 2 to 6 weeks
Nothing gets cut until the drawing is signed, and getting there takes 2 to 6 weeks of back and forth on a semi-custom build. Most of that goes on three decisions that compete for the same floor area, because a fixed bed, a wet bath and a garage cannot all be full size in one van. Shops selling published packages skip most of this stage, which is a large part of why their lead times are shorter.
A full custom commission runs the stage longer and charges for it. Advanced RV engineers each vehicle individually rather than configuring one from a menu, and design work of that kind is measured in months before a single panel is ordered. Paying for weeks of drawing feels like paying for nothing. It is the cheapest week in the whole project to change your mind in.
The queue, 6 weeks to 9 months
The queue is the stage nobody publishes and the stage that decides your year. Of the 27 shops we track, 4 publish a turnaround and none publishes a wait list. The number is real, it moves every month, and the only way to get it is to ask for a slot date rather than a build duration.
Geography moves it more than reputation does. The Colorado Front Range and Southern California hold the densest concentration of buyers and shops in the country, and both queue accordingly. San Juan Vans works out of Durango, 400 miles southwest of the Boulder and Denver cluster, and takes work from $19,000. Driving 8 hours to collect a finished van is a cheap way to buy back 3 months.
The chassis, 0 to 6 months
If the shop is sourcing the van, you inherit the manufacturer's clock and no builder controls it. Mercedes publishes four wheelbase and roof combinations on the Sprinter Cargo Van, from the 144 inch standard roof at $48,990 to the 170 inch extended high roof at $59,980. A common configuration is usually sitting on a lot within a day's drive. An uncommon one is an order, and an order is months.
Factory options are the other half of it. Ford offers all-wheel drive from the factory on the Transit, and anything specified at the factory arrives with the van instead of being retrofitted into a finished conversion. Availability differs by platform as much as price does, so choosing between the three platforms is partly a question of what sits on a lot this month and what is a 6 month order.
Shop time, 4 days to 10 weeks
On the floor, the order barely changes from shop to shop. Sound deadening and insulation first, then the floor, then the windows and fans cut into the metal, then the wiring, then walls and ceiling, then cabinetry, then plumbing, then the finish and the punch list. Each stage closes over the one beneath it, which is why the sequence is fixed and why a late change is expensive.
Electrical is the longest single trade inside the build and the one that halts everything else when a box is missing. An inverter, a lithium bank and a charger have to be in and tested before the cabinetry closes over them, so a part on backorder does not delay one stage. It delays every stage after it.
Handover and paperwork, 2 to 8 weeks
The van leaving the shop is not the end of the clock. Retitling a converted van as a motorhome is its own queue, and one Colorado owner's reclassification needed an emissions test, a VIN verification, a certified weight slip and a Statement of Assembly form before the state would reissue the title. Start that paperwork before collection rather than after it.
Collection day is also when you find out what you actually bought. Ask for the finished vehicle to be weighed and for the number in writing, because the payload the conversion leaves you decides how much water, gear and passenger the van can legally carry. 2 households who weighed their own Transit conversions recorded 1,125 lbs and 2,606 lbs of conversion weight, so the spread between one build and another is not small.
From the desk
The slot is what a deposit actually buys, and slots move to whoever is ready. We have watched a buyer take 5 weeks to approve a drawing, lose the March slot to the next van in line, and wait until July for the following one. The quickest builds we see are not the ones at the quickest shops. They are the ones where the buyer answered every email inside a day.
How long a self-build takes
A self-build has no queue and no shop rate, and it still takes longer than any professional build above. Two engineers who documented their own 2016 Transit recorded roughly 1,000 hours of work against $20,150 of parts, published line by line. That is the most honest number in the category, because it prices the thing every other estimate leaves out.
Do the arithmetic against your own week before you commit to it. At 10 hours across a weekend, 1,000 hours is close to 4 years. At 25 hours a week taken off a job you no longer have, it is 10 months. That range is why most self-builds land between 1 and 2 years, and why a meaningful share get sold half finished.
1,000 hours against a real calendar
Total1 to 2 years is the normal outcome
The hours are the easy half to plan. The hard half is that a van in pieces on a driveway does not wait for a busy month at work, and a build that stops for 6 weeks rarely restarts at the pace it stopped at.
The hybrid route is the one that gets ignored. Contravans will fit electrical, storage or a heater to a van you have already started, and Blue Ridge Adventure Vehicles takes work from $5,000. Paying a shop for the two jobs that start fires, then building your own cabinetry around them, cuts both the calendar and the risk without paying for a full commission.
What reliably adds months
Three things add months more reliably than anything else. The first is a change to the drawing after the van is already on the floor, and it is the most expensive week of the year to have a better idea.
Costs money to get wrong
A change order after the van is on the floor
Moving a wall once the wiring is run is not a small change. The electrical comes back out, the panel that was already cut is scrap, and the van often gives up its slot while the new drawing is approved and the new parts arrive. A 3 inch change to a galley run can add 6 weeks and several thousand dollars to a build that was 2 weeks from finished. Sign the drawing, then stop signing things.
The second is a component with a long lead time. Air conditioners, specific compressor fridges, imported windows and roof fans have all sat in order books for 8 to 12 weeks in recent years, and a van cannot be finished around the hole where the fan goes. Ask which parts on your build carry a lead time over 8 weeks and when they were ordered, because a shop that orders on the day your slot opens has already added a month.
The third is a decision the buyer never treated as structural. The height of the garage under the bed sets the height of the bed, which sets the headroom above it, which is why a request to fit one more bike arrives as a redesign rather than a tweak. Bring the bikes, the boards and the dog crate to the design meeting instead of describing them.
The shop's own year matters too, and it is fair to ask about. A build that runs into a holiday shutdown, a workshop move or the 2 weeks a small team spends at a van show does not pause politely around it. Small shops are straight about this when asked in advance and vague about it afterwards.
How to get a van sooner
The fastest route is to buy a van that already exists. Vanspeed runs a 26,000 square foot facility in Orange County and keeps completed Sprinters in stock, so the purchase behaves like a dealership rather than a commission. The Vansmith keeps a rotating inventory of finished builds in Boulder at $120,000 to $220,000. You give up specification and you get back the queue.
Only 4 of the 27 shops we track publish a turnaround at all, so comparing American builders on wait as well as price is most of the work before a shortlist exists. Two shops at the same price with a 6 month difference in wait are not the same offer, and only one of those two numbers is printed anywhere.
A used conversion is faster again, because it is finished. A three-year-old build from a named shop is available the week you find it, and the discount it carries against a new build is the price of living with somebody else's specification. Ask for the build invoice and the wiring diagram, and the risk in that trade drops a long way.
A finished production van is the third route. Storyteller Overland builds Sprinter and Transit campers in Birmingham and sells them through dealers at $160,000 to $220,000. An RVIA certified production build already exists on a lot, because its specification was settled long before you arrived. What you cannot do is change it.
The last lever is the chassis itself. A buyer who already owns a van removes the longest single unknown from the calendar, and every shop on our rankings will convert a van you bring. If you want the van by next summer, buying the chassis this month and booking the slot next month runs the two clocks in parallel instead of end to end.
What to settle before you pay a deposit
Price and specification take up most of a first call, and the questions that separate two shops are usually the ones about dates. Six of them are worth putting in writing before any money moves, and all six should come back in a single reply.
Six dates to get in writing before the deposit
- The date my van goes on the floor, and the date it comes off
- Who is buying the chassis, and whether it has already been ordered
- The date the drawing has to be signed for that slot to hold
- Which parts carry a lead time over 8 weeks, and when they are ordered
- What a change after the start date costs in dollars and in weeks
- The collection date, and where the van sits if I am late to it
A shop that answers all six in one reply is running a schedule. A shop that answers three of them and offers a phone call is running a hope, and the difference between those two shows up in month seven rather than week one.
