Our Story

Discovering Vanlife

In 2018, Kevin and Emily Fannan took a trip to New Zealand and when researching the best way to travel they decided to rent a custom campervan. Having never driven a campervan before they embarked on a journey that would change their lives. Kevin and Emily loved the freedom of vanlife and the unparalleled sense of adventure the felt each day on the trip. The New Zealand trip was a game changer, and when they returned they could not wait to get back into a campervan and explore other parts of the world.

For the next few years, Kevin and Emily became obsessed with “vanlife” vlogs and social media profiles.  They frequently dreamed of someday owning their very own adventure vehicle and hitting the open road in style, but there were very few rental companies to New Zealand. The primary option was buying one, and they can be pricey.  

After three years of dreaming, Kevin and Emily purchased their very own custom campervan. Since they were working remotely due to the pandemic, they frequently travelled Thursday-Monday working out of their home on wheels. All of the feelings of freedom and adventure they remembered from New Zealand returned and they fell in love with campervans all over again. When the pandemic continued to drag on, Kevin and Emily decided they much preferred the van then being stuck at home, so they sold all of their belongings and moved into their van full-time.  With their two loyal pups Max and Belle, Kevin and Emily travelled all across the USA, visiting 43 states and 30 national parks for nearly a year.

Scenic Vans is Born

In October 2021, Kevin and Emily found out they were expecting their first child.  While they knew fulltime “vanlife” was coming to an end, they thought back to when they dreamed of vanlife and how few opportunities there were to “Try Before You Buy.” This inspired them to create Scenic Vanlife Rentals.

Kevin and Emily initially saw Scenic as a side hustle out of their garage and not a full fledged business. They enlisted their longtime friend Ilan Ghitman to run their new rental company as a managing partner. However, Scenic immediately sold out its rental product and customers loved Scenic leaving rave reviews. Seeing the potential, Emily, Kevin, and Ilan dove headfirst into growing Scenic.

Building Vans

As the number of rental vans and customers increased, the founders noticed that most guests were renting from Scenic because they were trying out the product before they buy one of their own. Customers valued Scenic’s expertise when it came to the long term viability of van components, the durability of vans, and Kevin and Emily’s lived experience with van travel. Many satisfied customers requested that Scenic be their custom campervan builder and naturally, Scenic evolved into a full fledged build company.

Today, Scenic Vans is a fully-fledged van manufacturer and rental company, with the ability to construct 6-10 campervans simultaneously. Scenic has an impressive catalogue of designs and models with a state of the art build shop in Rancho Cordova able to produce high quality campervan conversions at extremely competitive rates.

Scenic continues to offer rental vans, custom conversions, as well as a remodel division that can modify and repair existing campervans, truck campers, trailers, and RVs.