Questions to ask a van builder before you sign

You are about to hand a workshop a deposit worth more than most cars, for a vehicle that does not exist yet, on the strength of a document you probably have not read twice. These are the questions that change what you get. Each one comes with the answer we would expect, measured against the 27 American shops we track and the prices they publish.

What 27 American shops actually answer

A question is only useful if you know what a good answer sounds like. We hold price, chassis, lead time and credentials for 27 American conversion shops, which makes it possible to say what is normal before you decide whether an answer should worry you. Several of the things first-time buyers treat as red flags turn out to be what almost every shop in the country does.

Four of those six rows say the same thing. This industry publishes less than a buyer expects, and a shop is not concealing anything by having no warranty page and no certification logo. The two rows that genuinely separate shops are the first and the last. A builder who will not put a from-price behind a defined brief, and has nothing finished for you to stand inside, is asking for a five-figure deposit against a description.

Price also tells you which market you are in before anyone discusses specification. American conversion work runs from $18,695 at Custom Coach Creations in DeLand, Florida to $600,000 at Advanced RV in Willoughby, Ohio, and the band a shop works in decides which of these questions are worth your time. Knowing what each budget actually buys turns a quote from a number into a claim you can test.

What to settle before the first call

Shops price a brief, not an ambition. The ones that come back inside a week with a real number are the ones handed five specific answers, and the ones that go quiet for a fortnight are usually the ones handed a mood board. Settle these before you dial and every quote you get back will be comparable to the others, which is most of the battle.

Then decide who to call. Most buyers reach a shortlist by comparing American builders on price and chassis, then approaching the two or three whose published range already contains their budget. Calling a $200,000 shop with $60,000 costs both of you an afternoon and teaches you nothing.

Seat count is the answer that quietly rules out half the market. A belted seat needs a factory anchor point or an engineered one, and shops differ enormously in whether they will fit either. 2 adults and 2 children need 4 belted seats and 4 berths inside the same floor space, and fitting a family into one van narrows the shop list before the budget does.

Price questions: what the number actually includes

What is in this price, and what is not

Almost every published price in this industry excludes the van. That is the largest single source of confusion in the category and it is worth clearing in the first two minutes of the first call. A shop quoting $60,000 and a shop quoting $125,000 can be selling you the same vehicle if one of them is buying the chassis on your behalf and the other is not.

Then ask for the exclusions by name, because the gap between two quotes is almost always a list rather than a margin. Windows and their fitting, a roof fan, the heater and its certification, a second battery, the awning, swivel seats, the bed slats, the flooring, the sales tax and the drive home: those are the lines that turn a $52,000 quote into $71,000 once a buyer discovers they were assumed rather than included. Ask which of them the number covers, and ask for the answer as a list rather than as a sentence.

Ask which chassis the price assumes, because that answer narrows your options as sharply as the budget does. Of the 27 shops we track, 22 will build on a Sprinter, 19 on a Transit and 16 on a ProMaster, and 7 of them build on one platform and nothing else. Picking between the three platforms commits you to a price band as well as to a van: the 4 Sprinter-only shops in our data start at $92,000, $115,000, $125,000 and $300,000, while the 2 ProMaster-only shops are DM Vans at $97,000 to $105,000 and Glampervan at $30,000 to $65,000.

What is the all-in figure with the chassis on it

Then get the total. Mercedes publishes the Sprinter Cargo Van from $48,990 to $75,830 depending on wheelbase, roof and powertrain, with the 170 inch high roof listed at $57,540, and that is before a single hour of conversion work. Add delivery, sales tax on both halves, title, registration and the first year of insurance, and the conversion quote can be under half of what you actually spend to get a van onto your driveway.

Ask whether the shop will build on a van you already own, and whether it will build on a used one. Most will do both. A 3-year-old high-roof chassis with 40,000 miles takes $20,000 to $30,000 off the top of that sum, which is the largest single saving available to a buyer who still wants a new conversion. It also moves the inspection burden onto you, and checking a used van before you buy it matters twice over when a shop is about to spend 300 hours building on top of it.

What is the payment schedule, and what is the deposit held against

Deposits in this industry run 25 to 50 percent, taken at contract, with stage payments through the build and the balance before the van leaves. On a $95,000 conversion that is $24,000 to $48,000 of your money sitting with a private company for months before a vehicle exists. All of that is normal. Not knowing what it is held against is not.

Two follow-ups are worth the awkwardness. Ask what happens to your money if the shop stops trading, and ask whether the chassis is titled in your name from the day it is bought. A van titled to the shop and a deposit with no defined status are the two ways buyers in this industry have actually lost money, and both take one line to answer if the shop has thought about them.

Build questions: weight, power and heat

What will it weigh finished, and what payload does that leave

Ask what the van will weigh when it is finished and what payload that leaves you. Mercedes publishes payload for the Sprinter at 3,450 to 3,814 lbs on the 170 inch high roof 2500 depending on drivetrain, which is the most common camper conversion platform in the country. A four-season build with 40 gallons of water, a 400 amp hour bank, a garage and 2 adults aboard can account for most of that before anybody packs a bag.

The answer that should give you confidence is a number and a method. Good shops weigh the finished van on a public scale and hand you the ticket. Better ones give you the axle weights, because a van can sit under its gross limit and still be over on the rear axle, which is where an overloaded conversion fails first. A shop that has never weighed one of its own builds has told you something useful, and the fix is a heavier chassis rather than a lighter fridge: Mercedes publishes 4,269 lbs of payload on the 3500 and 6,382 lbs on the 4500, same wheelbase, same roof.

How much charging, not how much battery

Ask how much charging the van has, not how much battery. Buyers ask for amp hours because amp hours are the number on the marketing page, and shops sell them, because a bigger bank is an easier upsell than a second alternator circuit. A 400 amp hour bank with 200 watts of solar and no DC to DC charger is a van that runs flat on the fourth grey day, and how much solar and battery a van needs is settled by the way you travel rather than by the size of the box.

The question that forces a real answer is this one. With the van parked, no sun, running the fridge, the fan, the lights and a laptop, how many days before I have to drive somewhere? A shop that answers in days has done the arithmetic for your specification. A shop that answers in amp hours has read you a parts list.

While the electrical is on the table, ask what in the van is proprietary to the shop and what is off the shelf. A control panel a builder designed itself is often the nicest thing in the van and the hardest thing to replace, and proprietary is a fine answer right up until a part fails 900 miles from the workshop. Ask what happens then, and ask whether the shop stocks spares for builds it finished 4 years ago.

Who certifies the heater, and what is behind the panel

Ask who fits the heater and who certifies the installation. A diesel or propane heater is the one component in a van that can kill you quietly, and the difference between a shop with a certified fitter and a shop with a confident one is invisible in photographs. Get the make, the model, the exhaust routing and the name of whoever signs it off, because heating a van through four seasons is where a cheap quote cuts first and where the cut is hardest to see.

Ask what goes behind the wall before the wall goes on, then ask for dated photographs of your own van at that stage. Ask as well what the shop does about the vapour that 2 people breathing produce every night, because that is the part most quotes skip. Insulation and vapour control is the only system you cannot inspect after delivery and cannot reach again without taking the interior back out, which is also why it is the easiest place to save $2,000 that nobody notices for 2 winters.

Ask for the floor plan drawn to scale with dimensions on it rather than a rendering. A rendering hides the 4 inches that decide whether the bed is long enough for you, and a scale drawing settles it in 10 seconds. Which layouts survive a fixed bed and a garage is a question of real inches, and it is the decision that costs the most to change once the joinery has been cut.

Ask whether all-wheel drive has to be ordered with the chassis. It does. Ford builds factory all-wheel drive into the Transit range, Mercedes offers it on the Sprinter, and neither can sensibly be added to a finished conversion, because reaching the drivetrain means taking the interior back out again. What the capability actually costs belongs on the order form rather than in a conversation 6 months later, and a good shop will ask where you intend to sleep before it lets you pay for an axle you will not use.

Timeline questions: two dates, not a season

Ask for two dates and refuse a season. The first is the day your van goes on the shop floor. The second is the day it comes off. The gap between them is the build. Everything before the first date is queue, and queue is where nearly all of the frustration in this industry lives.

4 of the 27 shops we track publish a lead time at all: Contravans from 4 to 6 days on modular work, Oasis Campervans at 3 to 4 weeks on a minivan, Off Highway Van at 6 to 8 weeks, and Vertical Vans at 8 to 10 weeks. Every one of those is build time. None of them is the wait, and a shop quoting 8 weeks with a 5-month book has not misled you unless you failed to ask the second question.

So ask when the van goes on the floor, then ask how many builds are in front of yours and how many bays the shop runs. Two shops quoting the same build time can be 4 months apart on delivery, and how long a conversion really takes is decided by that queue far more than by the specification you chose.

If the wait is the problem, ask whether the shop has anything finished. 2 of our 27 keep completed vans in stock, Vanspeed in Westminster, California and The Vansmith in Boulder, which is close to the whole of the walk-in market at this level. Buying finished against commissioning a build trades specification for time, and for a buyer with a season already booked that is usually the right trade.

Paperwork questions: certification, warranty and the change order

Ask about certification, then ask why you should care. RVIA certification means the vehicle has been inspected against the industry's electrical, propane and egress standards, and 2 of the 27 shops we track hold it: Storyteller Overland in Birmingham and DM Vans in Rifle.

What certification changes most is paperwork. A certified build finances and insures as a recreational vehicle, which usually means a longer term and a lower rate than a cargo van policy allows, and it takes an argument with an underwriter off the table before it starts. What it does not do is prove one shop builds better than another, since 25 of our 27 are uncertified and several of them are the best in the country. Ask what standard the shop builds to and who checks it, and take a specific answer about wiring and gas over a logo.

Ask for the warranty in writing, then ask which part of it the shop actually owns. 1 of our 27 publishes a term of its own: Outside Van in Portland backs its builds for 3 years, which it can do because it produces over 100 Sprinters a year and has the volume to carry the risk. Everywhere else you are usually being offered the component makers' warranties with the shop as a helpful intermediary, which is worth having and is a different product. The follow-up that matters is who pays the labour to take the cabinetry apart when a water pump fails in month 14.

Ask as well whether the shop services what it builds, and whether its own customers go to the front of that queue. A workshop booked 9 months out on new builds has to find bench time for a warranty job somehow, and the honest ones will tell you how long you would wait and whether they would send you to a local RV technician instead. Both answers are fine. Not having thought about it is the answer that should give you pause.

Then ask how a change is priced once the build has started, and insist on the process rather than a reassurance.

Ask, last, for an invoice that itemises the conversion separately from the vehicle. That single document is what lets you retitle the van as an RV, insure the $70,000 of conversion inside it rather than the shell it arrived in, and prove to the next owner what was actually fitted. A shop that produces one without being asked has done this often enough to know why you want it.

What a non-answer means at your price band

Not every refusal is a bad sign. The same non-answer means opposite things at $35,000 and at $350,000, and reading it wrong costs buyers either a good shop or a deposit.

Peace Vans in Seattle has been trading since 2011 and quotes every project individually, which is the only example in our 27 and reads as confidence rather than evasion at the level it works at. The same sentence from a shop advertising $39,000 packages means something else entirely: it does not yet know what your van costs to build, and you will find that out in month 4.

Apply the same rule to dates. A shop that is 2 years old cannot honestly forecast a delivery 9 months out, and the right answer from one is to say so. A shop with 100 builds behind it can, and if it will not, the reason is usually a book it would rather you did not see.

Questions for the shop's past customers

The reference call is the highest-yield 20 minutes in this whole process and almost nobody makes it. Ask for 2 owners who took delivery at least a year ago rather than the handover the shop photographed last week. A builder that cannot produce a customer from 2023 is telling you something about 2023.

Ask both owners the same 6 questions, because a pattern across 2 calls is worth more than a story from 1. Late is ordinary in this industry. How a shop behaved while it was late, and whether the owner heard about the delay from the shop or worked it out from silence, is the thing you are actually trying to learn.

Then look at a van if you can get to one. Open the cupboard doors and pull a drawer right out at the back of a 3-year-old build. Washboard road finds every fastener a shop skipped, and 5 minutes inside an old van from that workshop tells you more than an hour in a showroom with a new one.

The questions that are not worth asking

How long have you been in business is the question buyers ask first and it carries less than they expect. Colorado Camper Van has traded since 2009 and Peace Vans since 2011, while Sequoia + Salt has completed more than 250 campervans since 2020. Volume and repeat customers answer the thing that founding year is standing in for, so ask how many vans left the shop last year instead.

Do you build to code has no clean answer, because there is no single code for a camper van conversion in this country. The useful version of the question names the thing you want: which electrical practice the shop wires to, who fits and signs off the propane, and whether anyone outside the building ever inspects a finished van.

Can you do it cheaper is the wrong first question, and asking it early trains a shop to quote you a smaller van rather than a better price. Ask what comes out of the scope to reach your number, and a good builder will tell you plainly: the awning, the second battery, the wet bath, the swivel seats. A discount with no scope change is a shop cutting somewhere you will not see until the second winter.

None of this is a test a shop fails on one answer. What you are listening for across 6 or 8 questions is whether the number, the weight, the dates and the paperwork all come from the same place, or whether each one arrives from a different person a week later. A shop that has been asked all of this before answers in writing inside a week and does not sound insulted. A shop that treats the list as distrust has already shown you how the next 9 months are going to feel.