One day, if you're lucky, you might love something in this world as much as Will Sutherland loves yellow school buses. For the 32-year-old West Virginian, they've been a source of fascination since childhood. He remembers all but his earliest bus numbers, and he fondly recalls the rides to and from school being his favorite part of the day. "I actually got kicked off the bus for a week in second grade," Sutherland says in a thick southern drawl. "I had crawled underneath it to see how it worked." As is Sutherland's personable style, he even keeps in touch with his elementary school bus driver. "She drops off deer meat in my fridge even if I'm not home."
So where has this deep, lifelong affection for school buses led Sutherland? Well, he's surrounded himself with them. Of the three he currently owns, so far he's converted two of his hulking vehicles into RVs called "skoolies" to live in, road trip, and rent out. His most recent creation is an 18-foot, wood-paneled short bus—"Woody"—that earlier this year carried Sutherland on a three-week road trip with his girlfriend, Sabrina, and collie, Bruce. Parked under an apple tree and next to a chicken coop outside of his Shepherdstown, West Virginia, home, Woody is currently occupied by a local special ed teacher in need of short-term housing solution (he's found the accommodations so agreeable that his residency is going on five months). And down a stone path out back is Sutherland's first bus, a 28-foot International 3800 that maintains a 5-star rating on Airbnb after two years of renting and roughly 200 guests.
So where has this deep, lifelong affection for school buses led Sutherland? Well, he's surrounded himself with them. Of the three he currently owns, so far he's converted two of his hulking vehicles into RVs called "skoolies" to live in, road trip, and rent out. His most recent creation is an 18-foot, wood-paneled short bus—"Woody"—that earlier this year carried Sutherland on a three-week road trip with his girlfriend, Sabrina, and collie, Bruce. Parked under an apple tree and next to a chicken coop outside of his Shepherdstown, West Virginia, home, Woody is currently occupied by a local special ed teacher in need of short-term housing solution (he's found the accommodations so agreeable that his residency is going on five months). And down a stone path out back is Sutherland's first bus, a 28-foot International 3800 that maintains a 5-star rating on Airbnb after two years of renting and roughly 200 guests.
