After living on the road in a classic VW Westfalia, Dave Phelps created a business that helps others do the same.
THE RINGING OF THE PHONE echoes through the shop. Dave Phelps, 34, walks away from the transmission he’s dropping, wipes as much grease off his hands as he can, and picks up the handset. It’s hard to hear the customer over the soft diesel rumble of one of the nearby VW Vanagons. They’re not the original hippie vans, but rather more capable vans made from 1980 to 1991. Phelps sticks to the late models, and all of his fleet are Westfalias, the pop-top camper style. Surrounded by these “Westys,” Phelps talks the customer on the phone through Big Sur, Tahoe, and other secluded spots he could drive off to.
Phelps spent most of his 20s driving his ’89 Westfalia across the country, finding work and fun along the way: Montana for farming, Lake Tahoe to snowboard, Michigan to his old home, and any interesting spot in between. With all that time on the road, he had no choice but to learn everything that could go wrong with his Vanagon.
Nearly everywhere he went he found the same thing: interest. “So many times someone wanted to borrow my van. I’d say, If I had another one, I would. And that’s how I got the idea,” Phelps says.
This story is from the June 2019 edition of Popular Mechanics.
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This story is from the June 2019 edition of Popular Mechanics.
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