The Thousands

A few weeks ago, my dear friend Charles Prince hauled the contents of his storage unit in Fitzroy back to old Sydney town in a rented Winnebago.

Seems he had stumbled across a ridiculously cheap van relocation service called Standby Relocs where you basically only pay for petrol. It sounded too good to be true, and I said as much. Well, colour me wrong. I caught up with Charles yesterday to confirm the existence of cheap luxury travel on four wheels.

MO: So there’s always a listing of campers and cars that need to be relocated between cities and they let you rent them really cheap, right?
CP: There is a list that tells you where to pick them up from and where they need to be dropped off. The one I got usually cost about $350 a day but I got it for $30 a day!
MO: What was the van actually like?
CP: It was a giant luxury camper van with all the mod cons… (see attached pic)**MO: Were they weirded out by a young man with a big shaggy mane taking their expensive van?
CP: They were a bit weirded out… You need to give a deposit of $1200. But when you hire the van on normal rates the deposit is $7500!
MO: Did you break anything by accident that they didn’t notice?
CP: No, I was careful, but even if I had totally wrecked it they couldn’t have taken anymore than the $1200!
MO: Did you feel different behind the wheel than you usually would?
CP: It was scary cause it was so goddamn big – 3.5 meters high. Plus it was the length of 2 cars so parking was a bitch. But it had really good power steering.
MO: Would you recommend it for a purely hypothetical road trip to Sydney with me, Scottie, Gayfag and Canadian Jason?
CP: Totally… They have all sorts of cars and shit. Some only cost like $2 a day.
MO: What are you hinting at? That we’re even cheaper than you, you fictional character?