startup Renters can get a camper van in Portland and Bend, as well as L.A., San Francisco and, in 2019, Boise.
Dream Deliverers GoCamp gets camper vans in on the sharing economy and delivers adventure written by Sheila G. Miller INSTAGRAM POSTS with the hashtag #vanlife have become all the rage in recent years. I can’t possibly be the only Oregonian who looks wistfully at the wild vistas and the perfectly kitted vans and thinks, “Why not me?” Here’s why not: a new or gently used camper van can set you back between $20,000 and $100,000 and aren’t necessarily realistic for daily driving. Most of us will never own one. But that doesn’t mean the dream is dead—that’s where GoCamp comes in. Deborah Kane started GoCamp partly out of a desire to get others out into the wilderness and partly to prevent her camper van from sitting in her driveway all the time. Kane, who rents out her basement apartment in Southeast Portland using Airbnb, had her a-ha moment in 2017. 48 1859 OREGON’S MAGAZINE
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“Through my experience, I learned that people love the Northwest and they’re coming here on vacation all the time,” she said. “I also learned that the sharing economy is alive and very real, and while I was welcoming guests into my Airbnb basement apartment, there was my camper van sitting there in my driveway. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why there wasn’t an Airbnb of camper vans.” So she started one. GoCamp has a limited number of vans and other vehicles, owned by people in Oregon and California. GoCamp users can reserve the vans for rates averaging about $150 a night—more for a new Mercedes Sprinter, less for a Honda Element topped with a vehicle tent, for example. Pick your dates, pay through the website, and voila—you’re on your way to your camping dream come true. Kane loves to camp, and launching the company allowed her to make camping her full-time focus after years in the agricultural and food industries. Now she helps people get outside and get off their mobile devices. “We have found in the last two seasons that a lot of customers are families, and I just love thinking about mom and dad actually getting to talk to their kids because they can’t play video games because they don’t have cell service.”
