Reprinted from my old hometown newspaper - The Times News
You may remember that Nancy and I owned a bus back in the 1970s. Here is a neat story about a young couple that built a bus to run on vegetable oil and used it to cross the USA.
AL ZAGOFSKY/TIMES NEWS Amber Breiner and her husband, Josh Finsel, converted a 1992 Bluebird school bus into a mobile home, called a schoolie, to return to Pennsylvania from Oregon. Toward the rear, Josh demonstrates how the custom tanks of the schoolie are filled with waste vegetable oil, which they got free from restaurants along the 3,000-mile journey.
(This is Part One of a three-part series – How we got our yellow schoolie)
"I never imagined we'd buy a school bus and convert it to run on veggie oil," began Amber Breiner as she recounted the story of how she, her husband, Josh Finsel, and their three-year-old daughter, Ada, crossed America on a yellow veggie oil schoolie.
Although the trip comprised over a year in its planning, the actual trip from Eugene Oregon to White Haven, took only 10 days. According to Amber and Josh, the veggie oil schoolie had no problems and "it was a lot of fun."
The Finsels made two conversions to the retired school bus – one to renovate the interior into a motor home, and the second to convert the fuel system to run on waste vegetable oil.
The story began in 2004 when Josh and Amber were both working for Youth Services Agency as adventure counselors at camps for adjudicated teens. Josh was working at their boy's camp in Penn Forest and Amber was working at the girl's camp in Kunkletown.
"I wanted to learn to play the guitar," said Amber. "We had a mutual friend who knew Josh was a guitar instructor."
After three lessons with Josh, "he stopped returning my phone calls," said Amber. "He had feelings for me and I had feelings for him, and we were excited like two new friends meeting. We had a lot in common - a love of photography, the environment, and organic food, but it wasn't a good time for us to get together.
After a while, when Josh became available, he called Amber. She was no longer interested in guitar lessons, she had been teaching herself to play, but she was interested in dating Josh. A year and a half later, they married.
Josh's interest in organic farming took him to work at the 14-Acre Farm in Summit Hill. Amber, now pregnant, had applied to graduate schools and was accepted to a program in Public Administration and Non-Profit Management at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon.
They overpacked their Subaru with all their worldly possessions, squeezing their cat into a space reminiscent of the flux capacitor from Back to the Future.
Amber would start school the following year. In the meanwhile, they raised their daughter and started a wedding photography business.
As her program was in sight of completion, "we knew we were going to come back to Pennsylvania," Amber said. "Our family ties there are very strong and we wanted our daughter to grow up around our family. It's important to us."
But how were they going to get home? In the three years they were in Oregon, they had acquired a household of personal and business belongings plus "we had a lot of stuff for our daughter." Their first thought was to rent a U-Haul.
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AL ZAGOFSKY/TIMES NEWS "I never imagined we'd buy a school bus and convert it to run on veggie oil," said Amber Breiner as she recounted the story of how she, her husband, Josh Finsel, and their three-year-old daughter, Ada, crossed America on a yellow veggie oil schoolie.
Josh wanted something with some room so Ada would be able to play. Amber and Josh wanted to be able to camp along the way. "We thought about a conversion van or a VW bus," said Amber.
They remembered back before they left, the band Hot Buttered Rum played at the Mauch Chunk Opera House. "They traveled in a tour bus that was converted to run on veggie oil," Amber said.
They looked on Craig's List and found a converted tour busbut at $17,000, it was out of their price range.
They began researching their options and learned about schoolies, former school buses that were converted into mobile homes. They checked online sites and answered ads.
"We looked around town but decided that we didn't want to buy someone else's schoolie," Amber said. They learned that after so many years, school buses had to be retired and generally, these school buses are traded into a dealer for credit towards a new school bus.
"We decided we would buy one from a dealer," Amber said. "In our minds, if it came straight from the school district, it would be well maintained."
Josh had spoken with people from Green Eye Auto, a company that specialized in converting diesel engines to run on waste veggie oil. He learned what would be needed in a vehicle that he could convert to run on veggie oil.
They wanted a bus with automatic transmission, with undercarriage storage to locate the veggie oil storage tanks, and a flat front called a transit style.
They sought one final piece of information - advice from an experienced bus driver. That would be Josh's Uncle Hilbert - who drives a bus for the Lehighton School District.
"We asked him, what's his favorite bus?" said Amber. "Josh was looking at all different kinds of engines and options."
Uncle Hilbert said, "I don't know anything about the engines. My favorite is bus 19. That's what I get in and drive."
At the bus dealer, they found a bus retired from the Sweethome School District. "It had everything we wanted: automatic transmission, undercarriage storage, and a flat frontand it was number 19. We laughed about it and took it as a sign. The price was right. The guy gave us a break because the tires were down. We paid $4,600," said Amber.
(Continued in Part 2 Converting the yellow schoolie to veggie oil)
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