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All of us love the van life, or the concept of it. And lots of travellers with a van would like to take their kitted experience alongside R66 throughout America, or a summer time journey by means of the south of France.
Nevertheless, getting these beloved wheels abroad would require an overland Africa trek, a ferry and a number of logistical nightmares. However so many individuals all over the world have vans… what in the event you might simply borrow the van of a like-minded soul in, say, Australia, and supply them yours in South Africa?
That’s what Carlos Martinez, founding father of Swap My Van, thought too.
What’s Swap My Van?
A web-based neighborhood of world travellers in possession of a motorhome, RV, camper, van or any related leisure car. The aim of the platform is to get in contact with different van homeowners all over the world, and briefly trade autos.
In case you are registered on the positioning, you may make contact with one other van proprietor and organise an trade. In return, you let others use your car.
We requested Carlos to present us some perception into Swap My Van.
How did this concept come about?
In March 2022, my girlfriend and I purchased some very low cost tickets to fly to San Francisco in June. We had been very excited however once we began campervan and even automotive rental costs, we found that prices had skyrocketed after Covid.
We realized we couldn´t afford the journey, and began serious about shedding the aircraft tickets and simply doing a little Van journey in Spain or Portugal with our experience. Then it got here as much as me that perhaps somebody want to lend us his/her van in California and are available to Spain and use ours in trade.
So I googled “swap my van” and so forth, however couldn´t discover a web site for this goal, and no person appeared to have carried out this on any of the Fb boards… so I made a decision to put up an add on Reddit, and we discovered somebody who lends us her van! Touring California was superior, we obtained some locals suggestions, made a brand new pal and general, we saved some huge cash!’
I instantly thought that I wanted to create an internet site had been this type of momentary trade could possibly be organized with a lot ease, and spent a few of my free time within the subsequent months creating it, and two weeks in the past, it was able to be printed on-line.
How does it work?
It’s a quite simple but completely purposeful web site. You’ll be able to seek for different customers who want to trade their campervan or motorhome by continent, nation, date vary, or simply browse our map and get impressed. All you want to do is register your car, add some images and use the inner chat to ship messages to the customers you want to swap with.
When you get some constructive solutions you may trade numbers and transfer on from there. For instance, if you understand you’ve gotten holidays subsequent February, you may seek for somebody accessible to swap in that date everywhere in the world, or if you wish to go to Europe, you set that within the filter and all of the Europe customers present up. We’ve got looking filters for different wants like: does the car have a rest room inside, a kitchen, can I arise inside? And so forth.
The place have you ever travelled utilizing Swap My Van?
The San Francisco journey was our first expertise exchanging our van through Reddit. We simply printed our web site and we’ve got already had affords to swap our van with customers from New Zealand, Canada, USA and South Africa. Now, these are all very thrilling locations, we haven´t determined but the place and when to go subsequent! However we simply got here again from a month of travelling California, so we might want to quiet down for some months earlier than we will journey once more.
What’s your dream for the platform?
Our aim is to stay a free platform with hundreds of customers worldwide.
On this regard, we’re very excited concerning the brief, mid and long-term future. Within the two weeks after launching, we’ve got already reached presence in 19 nations in America, Europe, Africa and Oceania. The plan is to achieve a sufficiently big variety of customers, in order that subsequent time we’ve got a month of holidays we will simply browse the map and discover a van-swapper regardless of the place we wish to go. (I can confess, South Africa is beginning to sound an increasing number of widespread).
I see very huge potential for our web site, notably since, in opposition to different shared economic system platforms accessible on-line, we’ve got the aim to maintain it free, or a minimum of very low cost. (There are some upkeep prices that I’m paying proper now from my very own pocket) and targeted on the customers.
In abstract, I imagine in what I’m doing, and the aim is to create a worldwide community of van-people, to not purchase myself a yacht.
To see what it’s all about, go to Swap My Van.
Footage: Carlos Martinez
Additionally learn: Life on the street in SA’s solely identified Mk1 Transit camper van
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