I didn’t arrive at van building because I was chasing a trend.

If anything, I circled back to it.

For most of my life, I’ve built things. Sometimes out of curiosity. Sometimes out of necessity. Sometimes because I didn’t like the way they were being built elsewhere.

But alongside building, there has always been something else running in parallel: documenting. And exploring.

As a teenager, I worked in television production, learning lighting, framing, and the discipline behind what most people only see as a finished product. Back home, I volunteered in community television, operating cameras, directing segments, and producing small features. Media wasn’t something I watched — it was something I participated in.

Around the same time, I began sweeping floors in a custom guitar workshop. I couldn’t afford the instrument I wanted, so I decided to build one. That decision changed everything.

I moved from sweeping floors to shaping necks, fitting components, and working in tolerances measured in thousandths of an inch. I learned that craftsmanship isn’t about talent — it’s about repetition, discipline, and documentation. If you want something to be excellent more than once, you have to understand the process behind it.

Life interrupted that trajectory more than once. Addiction took me off course in my early twenties. Sobriety forced me to rebuild from scratch. Later, a table saw accident cost me part of a finger and forced another reinvention. I retrained, rebuilt, and eventually built a long career in systems architecture and executive IT leadership.

For over a decade I’ve overseen infrastructure, vendor relationships, compliance frameworks, and technology strategy at scale. That career brought stability — and it also brought travel.

Work took me across North America. I’d add a day to hike somewhere new. I’d rent a car and find a trailhead. I discovered that I love movement. I love geography. I love waking up somewhere unfamiliar and stepping outside into new terrain.

Long before vans entered the picture, I was camping — backcountry hammock trips, car camping with bikes, canoeing, kayaking, paddleboarding, cycling through long prairie roads. The rhythm was always the same: pack, set up, tear down, move.

What drew me to a camper van wasn’t aesthetic. It was friction reduction. The ability to pull up ready. Wake up, make coffee, and move on without unpacking your life every day.

And further down the road, I know what I want: to drive from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina. Slowly. Intentionally. Months at a time.

That kind of vision forces you to think differently about how something is built.

During my technology years, I never stopped making things. I rebuilt vintage motorcycles from the frame up. I renovated our home, removing load-bearing walls and installing engineered beams. I kept returning to cameras — from film to digital to drones — documenting the work behind the adventure.

Now all of those threads converge.

This company exists because I believe vans can be built better — especially for real winter, real distance, and real use. I live in Saskatchewan. -40°C isn’t theoretical here. Gravel roads aren’t marketing copy. If a system works here, it works anywhere.

I’m not building twenty vans a year. I’m building three, maybe four. Sequentially. Refined each time. Documented properly.

I’m not trying to be the biggest builder.

I’m building for the long road.