Bryan Rogala | Vanbassador

Adventure rigs are like tools: there’s a right one for every job. I’ve tested loads of rigs for Outside Magazine throughout the years, and have owned several myself, including a few truck campers, several trailers of varying sizes, and now, a Wayfarer Vans Walt. My wife, Sarah, and I were longtime trailer people, but after testing a Wayfarer Walt during a bikepacking trip along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route last summer, we were so smitten that we got one of our own. For us, the decision came down to realizing that a van fit our needs and current travel style better than a trailer 90% of the time. 

Travel Trailer Pros and Cons

Trailers are a good option if you’re looking for a lot of space and amenities, and already own a vehicle capable of towing. They exist in all shapes and sizes, from teardrops to 40-foot long bumper pulls and even apartment-sized 5th Wheels. Since they’re towed behind a vehicle, there’s no engine or transmission to maintain. You can also drop them wherever you’re camping and then use your vehicle sans trailer to drive around and explore farther, leaving the trailer behind as a basecamp.  

Amenities-wise, the sky’s the limit when it comes to trailers. Our 19-ft Airstream, for instance, had two sinks, a toilet, a shower, a three-burner stove, an oven, propane furnace, a refrigerator/freezer, an air conditioner, and slept up to 4. If you have a large family, a travel trailer can be a good way to sleep a lot of people. 

While there are a lot of things to like about trailers, they aren’t without their drawbacks. For many people, the biggest downside is the actual act of towing. Before you can hook up a trailer, you must make sure your tow vehicle is set up properly for towing. Most pickups and large SUVs come with these from the factory, but some vehicles will need a receiver, a trailer brake controller depending on whether the trailer has brakes or not, and potentially even suspension upgrades like airbags or helper springs. The other thing many people don’t find out until after they tow their trailer for the first time is that towing tanks a vehicle’s fuel economy, sometimes it can even cut it in half, and it’s not uncommon to hear of trucks getting single digit MPG numbers when towing large trailers.

While things like weight distribution and anti-sway hitches can help alleviate some of the scary parts of towing, like trailer sway, you’ll still be piloting a very long rig down the highway. That can also make for a tricky situation when you’re stopping for a meal, driving through a city or town, or trying to navigate a tight campground or forest service road.

Another major downside, in my experience, is that most traditional travel trailers produced by large RV brands are not well built. Walk through the booths at an RV show or visit a local dealer and you’ll see that most are built with cheap materials, like particle board walls stapled together, and leave a lot to be desired in the quality-control department. Even my Airstream, which came from one of the higher-end trailer brands on the market, suffered from build quality issues like broken cabinet latches and door knobs, peeling veneer, and more.

While the amenities in our trailer were nice, we also found that in practice they led to lots of headaches. The components used in many RVs are not very well made and tend to break often. The shower leaked, the refrigerator door broke, the furnace went out, and other components had to be replaced entirely. We pulled out the traditional flush toilet and replaced it with a composter so we wouldn’t have to deal with draining tanks at special dump stations. Water lines ran throughout our trailer, so when the mercury dropped we had to winterize it and were left without running water. All that meant a lot of maintenance, which I either had to do myself, or try to get an appointment at the Airstream dealer, which was often booked 6-9 months out and required dropping the trailer off for months at a time.

#Vanlife Pros and Cons

Vans present their own unique list of pros and cons. Truth be told, I wasn’t much of a van guy prior to testing out the Wayfarer Walt conversion. Sarah and I had always found them to be excessively loud inside, a pain to drive in high winds on the highway, and prohibitively expensive. Their self-contained nature also means you can’t leave them parked at camp to hold your campsite if you need to run into town or want to check out a new area or trailhead by day.  

One of the other downsides I alluded to above was more vehicular maintenance, since they obviously have an engine and transmission. Ultimately, however, I now think a van comes out ahead in this department. Yes, you do have things like oil changes, transmission flushes, and tire rotations, but a trailer still requires a tow vehicle that’ll need those things (sometimes more often thanks to the extra strain of towing). Best of all, a camper van isn’t relegated to being used only when you go camping the way a trailer is: it’s an awesome, multi-purpose utility vehicle. It works very well as a daily driver, or even a cargo van for hauling things like furniture or supplies from the hardware store, especially since Wayfarer’s modular interior makes it so easy to remove furniture from the inside if you need to. 

One of the main reasons we decided to try out a van during our trip last summer in the first place was a benefit of van travel I hadn’t thought of: personal safety. Sarah understandably wasn’t too keen on dealing with towing the Airstream by herself, but the nature of the trip meant she would be driving and camping alone quite often, and towing a trailer limited her ability to make a quick getaway if needed, since it required her to get out of the trailer and return to vehicle in an emergency (not to mention cranking up the leveling jacks and hitching up). Put more simply: she felt much safer in a van given the self-contained nature of it.

We were pleasantly surprised at how fuel efficient the van was. Our test rig, which was a converted 2023 Ram ProMaster 159” wheelbase with a high roof, averaged right around 20 MPG (nearly double what the truck towing the trailer would’ve gotten).

The build-quality issues I’ve experienced in different trailers and RVs were non-existent with the Wayfarer conversion. All of the furniture is constructed from half inch, 9-ply solid-core Baltic Birch plywood, doesn’t rattle, and is clearly designed to take a beating in addition to looking nice. The other materials Wayfarer chooses to use in their conversions, from the Havelock Wool insulation to the laminated composite wall and ceiling panels, to seat cushion fabrics and even cabinet door hinges are high-end and extraordinarily well thought out. We put our test van through its paces during my trip, and it came out the other end looking brand new. The sound-deadening subfloor insulation, along with the insulation in the walls and ceiling, plus the soft panels and window coverings, made for an exceptionally quiet van, as well.

The biggest upside to van travel, which took a bit of time for us to discover, is the comfort and simplicity of it. Since everything’s set up and ready to go, camp “setup” time is non-existent. You just pull into your spot, open the van door and go about your evening. The ability to pull off the highway, swivel the seats and prepare a meal or even just make a quick sandwich with everything you need right at hand, was also eye-opening. There was no such thing as a quick stop with the trailer, and traveling by van completely changed how we approached meals on the road.

With a van, you also never have to worry about navigating tighter city streets or finding parking spots that’ll accommodate a trailer. Even a Walt, which is the largest van conversion Wayfarer offers, is significantly nimbler than a truck and trailer combo. That nimbleness makes for a very good backroad explorer, too. We were able to turn around on several tight forest service roads that would’ve been a major hassle with our trailer. 

We didn’t miss any of the unnecessary luxuries we had in our trailer, either, especially since we still had most of the same systems in the van (like lights, running water, heat and more). Wayfarer gives you the option to add things like a Propex heater, a battery system for charging electronics, solar panels, a fridge, roof fans, air conditioning and a portable cassette toilet if you want them. The great thing about the components they offer is that they’re all high-quality, can be easily replaced or fixed if anything does happen, and don’t require much, if any, maintenance. We realized, for instance, that a simple hand pump with two, 5-gallon jugs of water is a far simpler and better way to deal with onboard water than 30-gallon fresh, grey and black tanks, a separate water heater, and water lines running throughout a rig. Instead of having to find dump stations, we could empty the van’s grey water nearly anywhere and fill the fresh water as often as needed from a hose, grocery store, or any other source of clean water. Rather than a complicated battery and electrical system, Wayfarer opts for a Goal Zero Yeti 1500x, which has everything most travelers need without overcomplicating things.

Traveling in a Wayfarer van really opened my eyes to how easy camping and road trips can be. It also reminded me that the whole point of an adventure rig is to enable you to get outside more comfortably and better engage in your hobbies and passions – the rig shouldn’t become the hobby itself. A trailer can certainly accomplish that, but for us, a van just worked a lot better. That’s what ultimately sold us on a Wayfarer conversion of our own. We brought our Promaster in for a Walt conversion in December and are looking forward to many great adventures to come.