Okay, so I (or my gf and I) do some pretty large mystery shopping routes. We've always tried to hedge our risk by utilizing a rental car and hotels. We budget about 150 a day of our shopping income for this. We got into a few groups where people live in their vans full time and we were thinking, why not try and do something similar with mystery shopping. What if we took that 150, and threw it at a vehicle and modified it so we could use it for sleeping, office, cooking, and obviously, camping/boondocking.
On that note, we did some looking and decided to get a 2006 Toyota Sienna. Here's a post I made shortly after we bought and started getting "stuff". I added a couple of update videos we've made since we started.
The maiden voyage of "Vanderbilt" (aka the Sienna Suite) begins tomorrow! Here are some pictures.
[www.dropbox.com]
So far we have probably spent about a thousand for various qualify of life items. Most of which you could do for a fraction of what we spent by doing things out of cardboard and plastic or similar. Even so though, we would normally budget about 2200 for car rental and hotels on a trip this size so that's well under everything we spent for modifications as well as a few months worth of car payments (200 a month). Definitely a good trade off.
So things we bought straight out were shields for every window except the moonroof. This will let us face the black side out in colder periods and the silver side out for hotter periods. They also fit near perfectly in our window wells so it does not let light come in. We're going to use weather stripping or electrical tape to take care of the small gaps along some of the edges. One of the more common issues with sleeping in a small space is condensation. That can also, over time, allow mold or other issues from being damp.
For this we picked up rain guards from weather tech that are set up on the first and second row of side windows. This lets us open them nearly two inches and not worry about stuff. We also picked up a windshield for the moonroof so we can open that at night most of the way without worrying about animals dropping in. We wanted to make sure we considered living in the vehicle in inclement weather so for the driver and passenger seats we picked up a set of these. Just for the front driver and passenger.
Depending on our final build for this, we may or may not get one for the 2nd row of seats at some point.
[www.weathertech.com]
We also picked up some cup "coasters" so any dirt or condensation, or random spills will be easier to clean out as we can pull the coaster and any liquid out and clean that rather than having soda or something in the actual cup holder.
[www.wayfair.com]
We picked up that cooler for shopping trips in general, but obviously it'll work for camping, get togethers, or whatever. The main reason for this one was it was large, lighter than the competitors, and appears to perform as good if not better than brands like Yeti which are twice to three times as pricey for the same space. In addition the large flat top surface can double as a lapdesk surface (so we can use it more like a table) and watch movies or use it as a work station. We can also use it as a chair or cup table. We will also have 2x additional coolers on this trip. We weren't entirely sure about the last one, but since we're bringing 72 cans of soda to start we figured we may as well not have loose cans running around. We got a bunch of these guys.
[www.amazon.com]
We premade about two weeks of food and did dishes we could freeze and reheat like fancy microwave meals. So we did dishes like this. All in with six cases of soda was about 210 dollars. We figure between that and the random mystery shop we can get for food that we can go about 2.5 to 3 weeks without having to spend any additional out of pocket funds for this trip.
[docs.google.com]
Here is the estimated trip for the month with some but not all of our expenses and jobs. We'll update it daily as we go along. We have a commitment to do most of these jobs, but not all. We work or arrangements at the beginning of some weeks to get a bunch of jobs in an area added onto our job board, and we will try to do as many as possible and if we can't get a location just move onto the next one right away. Then once we have done we can all get done in between our shops we commit and have to get done, we let the scheduler know and drop off the rest. Sometimes companies are willing to do that, sometimes they aren't. It's a win/win when it works out. Here's our tentative route. I expect to drop off several hundred worth of work but we still wrote it up as trying to hit everything.
[docs.google.com]
So back to the food we made. We froze it as it now acts as a cooling device for our food. We can nuke it at any truck stop or most gas stations. At the start of the trip, and each day, we will move 4x meals to the day cooler. Two on the bottom that are the most frozen still, then about 5 cans of soda each(warm if we have it as it will help unfreeze the days food), and then the two meals we are eating fore lunch that day on top. When we have lunch, we'll move them up. This helps them melt a bit so they can be reheated faster. The igloo is completely filled with all frozen ones and our lunch meats and cheeses. This lets us use the frozen ones from the igloo to provide enough cold for the days worth of food, and will let us keep things frozen and cold for well over a week and pushing two. Starting almost completely full with frozen meals and only opening it once or twice a day will go a long way towards making this work. In addition with us staying at a hotel for 1 or 2 nights a week we can always get some free ice or refreeze our containers if we need to. (Most hotels will be willing to freeze a small amount of things if you ask them and dont have one in room. Just thought I'd share the shenanigans we're getting up to this month.
Using this for a work station for the laptop.
[www.amazon.com]
We snagged this as it holds two complete sets of gear, shirts, cam, battery, buttons, and sd cards all in its own assigned spot. Its our shopper bugout bag.
[www.amazon.com]
Then we each got a backpack, this one was mine It holds more than weeks worth of clothes if ya need (we did a weeks worth) and we both used packing cubes. In addition, this will hold my 17 inc gaming laptop and all it's accessories, my assorted chargers, a chromebook, tablet, and random assorted cables and cords, eyeglasses, etc. It also keeps another shopper shirt. (we each have two since youre guaranteed to have some kind of accident while out shopping and you need to be able to still shop and not look disgusting
) Honestly, this backpack is ridiculously amazing.
[www.amazon.com]
Here's a couple of updates I did on video.
[www.youtube.com]
[www.youtube.com]
All in all this has been a pretty solid trip. A solo shopper could have done the vast majority of these and would easily have made 4 or 5k+ after expenses for the route. Lots of our expenses were one off charges or are things that some of you probably dont have to pay such as someone to watch your Airbnb business or all of the extra stuff we bought to mod out the sienna.
If ya got any questions, comments, or whatever feel free to post em! Hope this was educational and entertaining =)
If you dont know, we are also the owners of Mystery Shopper's Depot so if you need any video equipment, we are still processing orders and you can reach out to us if ya need anything, have questions about gear, or just want to talk shop with someone who logs some miles =)
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2020 05:45PM by jrossetti.
On that note, we did some looking and decided to get a 2006 Toyota Sienna. Here's a post I made shortly after we bought and started getting "stuff". I added a couple of update videos we've made since we started.
The maiden voyage of "Vanderbilt" (aka the Sienna Suite) begins tomorrow! Here are some pictures.
[www.dropbox.com]
So far we have probably spent about a thousand for various qualify of life items. Most of which you could do for a fraction of what we spent by doing things out of cardboard and plastic or similar. Even so though, we would normally budget about 2200 for car rental and hotels on a trip this size so that's well under everything we spent for modifications as well as a few months worth of car payments (200 a month). Definitely a good trade off.
So things we bought straight out were shields for every window except the moonroof. This will let us face the black side out in colder periods and the silver side out for hotter periods. They also fit near perfectly in our window wells so it does not let light come in. We're going to use weather stripping or electrical tape to take care of the small gaps along some of the edges. One of the more common issues with sleeping in a small space is condensation. That can also, over time, allow mold or other issues from being damp.
For this we picked up rain guards from weather tech that are set up on the first and second row of side windows. This lets us open them nearly two inches and not worry about stuff. We also picked up a windshield for the moonroof so we can open that at night most of the way without worrying about animals dropping in. We wanted to make sure we considered living in the vehicle in inclement weather so for the driver and passenger seats we picked up a set of these. Just for the front driver and passenger.
Depending on our final build for this, we may or may not get one for the 2nd row of seats at some point.
[www.weathertech.com]
We also picked up some cup "coasters" so any dirt or condensation, or random spills will be easier to clean out as we can pull the coaster and any liquid out and clean that rather than having soda or something in the actual cup holder.
[www.wayfair.com]
We picked up that cooler for shopping trips in general, but obviously it'll work for camping, get togethers, or whatever. The main reason for this one was it was large, lighter than the competitors, and appears to perform as good if not better than brands like Yeti which are twice to three times as pricey for the same space. In addition the large flat top surface can double as a lapdesk surface (so we can use it more like a table) and watch movies or use it as a work station. We can also use it as a chair or cup table. We will also have 2x additional coolers on this trip. We weren't entirely sure about the last one, but since we're bringing 72 cans of soda to start we figured we may as well not have loose cans running around. We got a bunch of these guys.
[www.amazon.com]
We premade about two weeks of food and did dishes we could freeze and reheat like fancy microwave meals. So we did dishes like this. All in with six cases of soda was about 210 dollars. We figure between that and the random mystery shop we can get for food that we can go about 2.5 to 3 weeks without having to spend any additional out of pocket funds for this trip.
[docs.google.com]
Here is the estimated trip for the month with some but not all of our expenses and jobs. We'll update it daily as we go along. We have a commitment to do most of these jobs, but not all. We work or arrangements at the beginning of some weeks to get a bunch of jobs in an area added onto our job board, and we will try to do as many as possible and if we can't get a location just move onto the next one right away. Then once we have done we can all get done in between our shops we commit and have to get done, we let the scheduler know and drop off the rest. Sometimes companies are willing to do that, sometimes they aren't. It's a win/win when it works out. Here's our tentative route. I expect to drop off several hundred worth of work but we still wrote it up as trying to hit everything.
[docs.google.com]
So back to the food we made. We froze it as it now acts as a cooling device for our food. We can nuke it at any truck stop or most gas stations. At the start of the trip, and each day, we will move 4x meals to the day cooler. Two on the bottom that are the most frozen still, then about 5 cans of soda each(warm if we have it as it will help unfreeze the days food), and then the two meals we are eating fore lunch that day on top. When we have lunch, we'll move them up. This helps them melt a bit so they can be reheated faster. The igloo is completely filled with all frozen ones and our lunch meats and cheeses. This lets us use the frozen ones from the igloo to provide enough cold for the days worth of food, and will let us keep things frozen and cold for well over a week and pushing two. Starting almost completely full with frozen meals and only opening it once or twice a day will go a long way towards making this work. In addition with us staying at a hotel for 1 or 2 nights a week we can always get some free ice or refreeze our containers if we need to. (Most hotels will be willing to freeze a small amount of things if you ask them and dont have one in room. Just thought I'd share the shenanigans we're getting up to this month.
Using this for a work station for the laptop.
[www.amazon.com]
We snagged this as it holds two complete sets of gear, shirts, cam, battery, buttons, and sd cards all in its own assigned spot. Its our shopper bugout bag.
[www.amazon.com]
Then we each got a backpack, this one was mine It holds more than weeks worth of clothes if ya need (we did a weeks worth) and we both used packing cubes. In addition, this will hold my 17 inc gaming laptop and all it's accessories, my assorted chargers, a chromebook, tablet, and random assorted cables and cords, eyeglasses, etc. It also keeps another shopper shirt. (we each have two since youre guaranteed to have some kind of accident while out shopping and you need to be able to still shop and not look disgusting
) Honestly, this backpack is ridiculously amazing.
[www.amazon.com]
Here's a couple of updates I did on video.
[www.youtube.com]
[www.youtube.com]
All in all this has been a pretty solid trip. A solo shopper could have done the vast majority of these and would easily have made 4 or 5k+ after expenses for the route. Lots of our expenses were one off charges or are things that some of you probably dont have to pay such as someone to watch your Airbnb business or all of the extra stuff we bought to mod out the sienna.
If ya got any questions, comments, or whatever feel free to post em! Hope this was educational and entertaining =)
If you dont know, we are also the owners of Mystery Shopper's Depot so if you need any video equipment, we are still processing orders and you can reach out to us if ya need anything, have questions about gear, or just want to talk shop with someone who logs some miles =)
CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2020 05:45PM by jrossetti.
