Every so often, I like to apply a simple Litmus test to my life to help me figure out a couple things. The test has a single question, and the way I answer this question tells me a lot about how reasonable of a person I'm being, and if I'm living in a sustainable way. The questions is this:

If everyone acted the way I'm acting, would it still work?

It's a simple enough question, and easy enough to apply to every day life. Next time you're on the highway, ask: If everyone drove the way I'm driving right now, would that be safe? Or maybe the next time you're in the office, check: If everyone put in the same level of effort I'm putting in right now, would the company be better or worse off? It's a simple enough question to be broadly applicable and easy to fit to any situation. I wanted to apply this question to my situation, and I phrased it as follows:

Would it be possible for everyone to live the way that I'm living right now?

I don't think this one has an easy answer. Or rather, I think the answer is clear, but it depends on the perspective you're looking at it from. So I'm going to play a bit of Devil's advocate, and answer my question.

Hell No.

I can hardly imagine what the parking lots would look like if everyone at my company lived in them. They would be packed, there'd be no room for everyone, and the traffic would be completely unbearable. And forget about using the gyms and showers in the morning or at night, there'd consistently be lines out the doors, and the facilities would quickly become gross and worn. Not to mention that dinner is only open at a few cafes on campus, and the lines are bad enough as it is. If everyone was trying to eat all their meals here, the company would have to shutdown the perks all together. If everyone was doing what I'm doing right now, everything would devolve into chaos, and it would happen pretty quickly.

Totally!

In a more general sense, experimentation with "decentralizing" the home is not a new concept. A good example of this is the Capsule hotel, which is a type of hotel in Japan where you sleep in one of hundreds of small pods, and have access to a communal bathroom. This is basically what I'm doing, except instead of a pod, I have a box truck, and the "communal bathrooms" are at my workplace. If we ditch the European value of loving to have ownership over things, particularly land, this is a pretty efficient way to go about things. If everyone's homes were just glorified sleep pods and small storage areas, we'd save an enormous amount of land, energy, water, and pretty much every other resource that we consume. Something mankind has derived countless times in the course of engineering the world is that it's always more efficient to do something big and in bulk. Freight shipping is more fuel efficient, giant gas-powered turbines run more efficiently than cars, and having large communal facilities is more efficient than every individual having their own. Granted, I'm not addressing issues of food or leisure, but in this weird thought-experiment, those can remain basically the same as they are now. The point is that, if we had always organized our lives around small sleeping quarters and large communal services, we'd be dealing with far fewer sustainability issues than we are today. So in this sense, the answer is yes, it is totally possibly for everyone to live how I'm living right now.

As I've mentioned before, I drove buses in a past life (read: two months ago). That meant that in Massachusetts, I had a Commercial Driver's License. The bus company that I had worked for over the course of the past four years graciously trained their drivers and paid them, but in the Real World^TM, obtaining a CDL can be super expensive. Most driving school websites don't list their prices, but this one has a quote of $225 for a 2-hour private lesson. Considering you need ~50 hours of instruction and driving experience to take the test (which is another $300 on that site), that puts the cost of a CDL at over $5,000. But why am I talking about the price of a CDL? Well initially, I was worried that I'd need one to drive my box truck legally, then after a bit of research in the California CDL Handbook, I found that:

You may drive a 2-axle vehicle with a GVWR of 26,000 lbs. or less with a basic class C license.

-California CDL Handbook, 2014-2015

I'm not that great at estimation, but I'm willing to bet the box truck weighs less than 13 tons, and I think it's a 2-axle vehicle. And this all makes sense, because it's just a decommissioned Budget truck (you can still see the faded lettering on the front). But anyway, after I realized that I didn't need to keep my CDL, I found out that the conversion process was as simple as taking a few written knowledge tests about large vehicles, air brakes, and how to drive with tons of passengers. This was pretty cool, because like I said before, CDLs are expensive, and it can't hurt to have one. That way, if software engineering doesn't pan out for me, I can still be a truck/bus driver. How glamorous.

The Quest

So I glazed over the CDL Handbook for a few days and went and took the test. It's a bunch of common sense questions, and it can't possibly be that hard. Right? Nah, not right. I hadn't taken the test in nearly four years, and I didn't take the preparation seriously. So in my infinite wisdom, I managed to fail not one, not two, but all three tests. So here I am, sitting in a cafe, reading the CDL Handbook cover to cover. Okay, maybe not cover to cover, but definitely at least all of the relevant chapters.

But seriously, why even bother?

Aside from the aforementioned cost, having a CDL also makes owning a huge box truck less suspicious. To people who aren't quite so knowledgeable about what you can and can't drive with a regular license, it doesn't seem so outlandish to say that I do some freelance furniture moving, and I need the Commercial Driver's License to operate my freelance side business legitimately. Because otherwise, why wouldn't I just buy a Prius like a normal Californian (or a Tesla, like a normal Californian software engineer).

That's still a pretty poor reason to go through all this trouble. I don't actually have a legitimate reason, I just enjoy reserving the right to drive large, hulking vehicles. And come tomorrow morning at 8:15 AM, we'll find out if that's a right that I deserve to reserve.

I occasionally mention how glad I am that I'm able to live the way I do, but it's definitely not for everyone. In fact, the reason I'm able to do this is mainly because of the benefits afforded to me by the company I work at. Not that I expect many people are envious of my lifestyle, but for all those aspiring to live out of some type of vehicle, here is a list of hard requirements, collected through experience and in no particular order, that your life should possess before you consider trying to live in a box truck.

Hard Requirements

• Good weather. You need to live in a place where the outside conditions are bearable year round. And when I say bearable, I mean you need to be comfortable sleeping in them. Unless you get extremely fancy (at which point, why bother?), you aren't going to have heating or cooling in your truck, so if you aren't in a temperate area, your life is going to be unpleasant for at least part of the year. I live in the Bay Area, which is about the most temperate, tolerable place on the planet, and even I'm mildly uncomfortable on particularly cold or hot nights. Make sure you're comfortable with mild discomfort.
• Access to facilities. You need to have a place to shower and go to the bathroom. Period. Living in a truck doesn't mean you get to abandon personal hygiene, in fact it means you have to step it up a notch so people don't think you're insane and gross. This means that regardless of where you're showering, whether it's the office, a local gym, or a bathhouse, you do need to be showering. Going to the bathroom in a crate is not sustainable, and also makes me legitimately sick to think about. You're a minimalist, not an animal.
• Money upfront. It isn't cheap to start living in a car. First off, you have to have the damn car, and depending on what you want to live in (make sure to get something with at least a little bit of extra room), that's going to cost you anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000. This is not a cheap or short-term endeavor. Second, you'll have to pay more for insurance, which is higher for larger and commercial vehicles. Expect to pay anywhere from $750 to $2,000 a year. Depending on what your previous housing situation was, you'll also need a few pieces of furniture, namely a bed and some sort of storage unit. Check Freecycle, Craigslist, and if those fail, Ikea. Basically, you've got to spend money to save money, if that's even why you're considering this.
• An address. When you don't live in a building, you don't get the luxury of having mail sent to it. You're going to need either a dependable friend or family member close by who is willing to let you use their address, or you're going to need a Private Mailbox. You need to have a real, deliverable address to put on official documents, apply for things like insurance, and get letters and packages to.

Okay, so those are all the things that you absolutely need to have before you journey down this road. Here are a few other things that certainly won't hurt.

Soft Requirements

• Be comfortable with yourself. If you're self-conscious or place a lot of value on other peoples' opinions of you, you're going to have a really tough time. You'll eventually have to explain to someone that you live in a car, and not everyone is going to be so receptive of that. If you can't handle people not accepting your lifestyle, definitely don't do this. You need to be able to admit to yourself that you're a little insane, and that this isn't something reasonable human beings do. I frequently find myself giggling at just how ridiculous it is that I'm driving my house down the highway. Sometimes, people may see you getting in or out of your car and notice that you clearly live in it. If that bothers you, this might not be the lifestyle that you're looking for.
• Have (time-consuming) hobbies. Your car isn't really meant for hanging out in, and even if you try, it's just not a place conducive to being fun. After work and on weekends, if you don't have any itinerary or activities planned for yourself, you're going to get bored very quickly. Personally, I make new websites, work on this blog, exercise, and amble around the Bay Area, exploring what it has to offer. Sleeping and walking in circles in the back of a truck are not valid hobbies.
• Be a decent driver. This is more for people who are going for box trucks, RVs, school buses, and the like. Vans and small trucks don't really have this issue, but as I've mentioned before, maneuvering and parking a large vehicle in an urban area can be exhausting, even when planned out. And if you aren't a careful driver, an accident here costs a lot more than an insurance premium: it effectively makes you homeless. So don't drive your house around if you can avoid it, and when you do have to drive it, be a very careful and alert driver.
• Be flexible and adaptable. If you're high maintenance and accustomed to a certain lifestyle, it really should go without saying that this isn't the best course of action for you. And even if you are flexible, living in such a dynamic environment means that the requirements of your life can be constantly changing. If you aren't self-sufficient and able to react quickly to the various road bumps (quite literally) of life, truck-living will get discouraging very quickly.

All of these things considered, if you're doing this to save money, make sure you actually plan it out first. I'm not talking casually daydreaming about it the day before you do it, I'm talking research and cold, hard numbers. Make a spreadsheet or something. Be very liberal with estimating the cost of various things, you'd rather be surprised by how much money you have than how little. Between eating out all the time, a gym membership, increased insurance, a private mailbox, and other random things that you'll end up paying for, you want to be sure that the lifestyle is indeed more economically feasible than the alternatives, again, if that's your goal. It's certainly less convenient in some ways than having a house or apartment, so if you're paying more in the long run, you're probably doing it wrong.

Something I noticed when I first bought this truck was that it had a special permit in it. A special permit issued by the "Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration", authorizing it to carry…something? I'm not actually sure what this truck was used for prior to my purchase, some sort of commercial activity, and I know for a fact that it started it's life as a simple Budget truck. Call it stubbornness or naivety, but I'm not particularly interested in finding out what it actually was carrying. I've lived here a month with no adverse effects, and I've even noted my improved sleeping abilities. Who knows, maybe my ability to sleep is from toxic fumes knocking me out every night, or maybe one morning I'll wake up and all my hair has fallen out and I'll have developed some new, baffling form of respiratory cancer. That would be an interesting one to explain to a doctor. Best case scenario, the truck was carrying radioactive waste and my exposure is slowly giving me super powers. Worst case scenario, the truck was carrying radioactive waste and my exposure is slowly turning me into a character from The Hills Have Eyes.

All I know for sure is that I'm living in a truck that has "special permit authorization" to carry hazardous wastes. Given that the only things that this truck carries are me and my livelihood, that permit is effectively calling me hazardous waste. In any case, I'm authorized to carry hazardous wastes well into the year 2017, which I'm sure will totally come in handy at some point.

Unfortunately, I'm not talking about some more RV/Hippie Van/Truck neighbors.

No matter how well you plan out things, life always has a way of throwing little things at you to make sure you're still paying attention. For the past week, life has been throwing the sound of jackhammers in my direction. It makes perfect sense that construction crews would work at night, when normal human beings aren't at work and getting in their way, but I certainly was not expecting the parking lot I call home to be subjected to such perils. Like, they're actually tearing up 10' by 10' sections at a time, something to do with pipes or electricity or whatnot. I'm a computer systems engineer, not a mechanical engineer, I have no idea how any of this stuff works. It makes me think back to when I was considering getting soundproofing installed by that Happy Vans company in San Jose. It's still not really an issue, the truck actually does a surprisingly good job of blocking it out, and I haven't had any trouble falling asleep. Still, just goes to show you that there will always be something, whether it's crows, radioactive waste, or jackhammers.

In any case, I enjoy the variety and dynamic unpredictability of the whole situation.