Getting Out of the Big Van Business

In March 1999, Annette was pregnant with Jason. At the time, our only vehicle was our 1996 Ford Contour (see We Never Took It Back). With Jamie, Tanner, and Allyn already filling the back seat of the Contour, we knew we needed another vehicle before Jason was born.

We decided we wanted a Dodge Grand Caravan and started looking for a used one. We were in our first year after graduate school and still living on a very tight budget. My salary at the University of Oklahoma was $72,000, and I had $42,500 in student loans. I would have preferred to buy a new van, but we were trying to live more frugally.

We found a couple of vans advertised in the Thrifty Nickel. The first was a gold Grand Caravan for sale on the south side of Oklahoma City. We went to look at it and took it to a mechanic to have it checked. The mechanic told us it needed a new transmission. We decided that was not the van for us.

A couple of days later, we found a green 1996 Grand Caravan. We drove it, liked it, and bought it.

Our 1996 Dodge Grand Caravan, our first family van.

The Grand Caravan had two bucket seats in the middle and a three-person bench seat in the back, so it could hold seven people. That worked well for a few years. Jason was born in 1999, and Truman came along in 2002. By early 2004, we had five kids, and Annette was pregnant with Ashton. Our seven-passenger van was about to be one seat short.

One Sunday after a High Priest Group meeting, Walt Hobbs, a member of our ward, approached me.

"I heard you're interested in getting into the big van business."

Walt and his wife, Greta, had eight kids, but they were down to only two children still living at home.

"We're looking to get out of the big van business," Walt told me.

They owned a 2001 Ford Econoline E-350 15-passenger van and were interested in selling it.

When we got home from church, I asked Annette if she would be interested in buying the Hobbs' van. We agreed to buy it. We secured an $11,000 loan from the OU Credit Union and bought the van in February or March 2004. I wrote more about buying the Ford in Get Into the Big Van Business.

Our 2001 Ford E-350. The running boards and stripe
helped make it look a little less like a daycare van.

We were excited to have a van big enough for our growing family, with plenty of room for suitcases on our summer trips to Utah and Wyoming if we removed the last row of seats.

There was just one problem. The van was completely white.

Annette thought it looked like a daycare van.

We took it to a detailing shop and had fiberglass running boards installed along with a blue-gray stripe down the side. That made it look a little more like a family van.

Now we needed to decide what to do with the Grand Caravan. Another family in our ward, the Ledesmas, had a van that was on its last legs. Annette was serving in the Young Women's presidency with Georgina Ledesma and knew they could use another vehicle.

We decided to give them our Grand Caravan.

When we went to the motor vehicle office in Oklahoma, however, they would not let us record that we had simply given them the van. We had to put down a sale price.

So we sold the Grand Caravan to the Ledesmas for $1.

Georgina actually gave us a dollar bill.

The Ford van moved with us to Texas in 2005. Ashton was born in July 2004, and the van easily accommodated two more children, Tate and Addison, who were born after we moved to College Station. For years, that big white van was simply part of our family.

By 2009, we had put more than 100,000 miles on it.

In December of that year, another family in our ward, the Bakers, crashed their 15-passenger van and totaled it. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. Only the dad was in the van when it crashed.

The Bakers had eight children and very little money. Tanner and I were their assigned Home Teachers, and I knew there was no way they could afford to replace their van.

I told them we would give them our van if they could get the title and tags transferred into their name and insure it. I think the ward helped with some of those expenses through fast offering funds.

That meant we needed another van.

Annette and I conducted a statewide search. We found a few 15-passenger vans in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a couple in the Houston area, and one in Waco.

There was one thing we wanted to change from the Ford. The Ford had two outward-opening side doors like barn doors. The kids were constantly opening them and banging them into whoever happened to be parked next to us.

General Motors had started putting sliding side doors on its GMC and Chevrolet 15-passenger vans.

That was what we wanted.

We thought a 2010 GMC Savana 3500 at Richard Karr Motors in Waco would meet our needs. Since it was a GMC, we first went to our local GMC dealer in College Station to see if they could help us purchase it.

It was December 29, 2009.

A salesman came out to help us and took us into his office. After a few minutes searching on his computer, he told us, "I'm sorry. There are no 15-passenger vans available in the entire state."

I had already searched the entire state.

I knew that wasn't true.

I still don't know why the local dealer didn't want to sell us a van.

We went home, and I called Richard Karr Motors in Waco. I asked about the 15-passenger GMC Savana they had advertised.

It was still there.

I told the salesman I was driving from College Station and would be there in two hours to buy it.

Annette and I climbed into the Contour and headed for Waco. On the way, we listened to Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover. Annette's mom had sent it to us for Christmas.

Perhaps listening to The Total Money Makeover while driving to Waco to spend $43,000 on a van wasn't perfect timing.

When we arrived, we drove the van around the block and told the dealer we wanted it.

The dealer explained that a local church had custom-ordered the van, but then decided not to buy it after it arrived. It had only 28 miles on it, and the plastic covers were still over the carpet.

The original Texas title for our 2010 GMC Savana.
It had only 28 miles on it when we bought it in December 2009.

We signed the paperwork and headed home. I drove our new van, and Annette followed me in the Contour.

When we got back to College Station, we stopped at Olive Garden for a dinner date. Jamie, who was a junior in high school, made dinner for the kids at home.

Our 2010 GMC Savana 3500, shortly
before we sold it in September 2026.

That van became Annette's everyday vehicle. She drove it to work, the grocery store, church, school activities, and everywhere else we needed to go. The kids loved the van because when Mom showed up to pick them up from an event, they could always see her in the pickup line!

We loaded our family into it for trips across the country. It hauled eight kids and all the stuff that came with them.

Over the next 16 years, we put more than 186,000 miles on it.

And, one by one, the kids grew up.

By 2026, all eight of our children had graduated from high school and left home. It was just Annette and me, but we still had our 15-passenger van.

In July, we planned a 5,600-mile road trip. Before we left, I took the van in for an oil change and asked them to check the air conditioner because it wasn't blowing cold air.

The list came back longer than I wanted.

The service shop recommended that the brakes be replaced. The air conditioning compressor needed to be replaced. There was a small leak in the air conditioning hoses. The rear shocks needed to be replaced.

Annette and I decided we would take the van on one last long trip, but not do any of these recommended repairs. When we got home, we would retire it to around-town transportation.

During the trip, a rock hit the windshield. The chip quickly spread into three cracks, each about 15 inches long, running up the middle of the windshield.

After we got home, Annette and I debated whether it was worth replacing the windshield on a van we were planning to use only around town.

In the end, we decided it was a safety issue and spent $700 to replace it.

Then Annette came home from work one day and told me the side door would not latch completely.

I went outside to investigate. I could see some play in the roller rail, and the back latch wasn't lining up quite right. We tried pulling the door closed several times. It just wouldn't quite latch.

So I did what a Jasperson would do.

I grabbed the bottom edge of the door and lifted it about half an inch. Then I grabbed the handle and muscled the door closed.

It closed all right.

The only problem ... it wouldn't open anymore, either.

Annette and I decided the non-functioning door wasn't a big deal. We had already decided that the van would just be used for commuting around town. We weren't planning to haul people anymore.

We climbed inside, removed the back three rows of bench seats, and slid them as far forward as possible. That left a large space in the back for groceries, boxes, or whatever else we needed to haul.

That arrangement lasted for a few weeks.

On Wednesday, September 16, Annette drove the van to work to transport several large boxes of scrubs for embroidery. She drove it on a few errands during the day, and everything seemed fine.

But when she went outside to drive home, the van was making a very loud and unusual noise.

She called me.

I drove over to investigate.

It was the power steering pump.

Because we lived only 1.3 miles from Annette's work, I decided I could drive the van home. I noticed fresh fluid on the ground when I backed out of Annette's parking space

The power steering pump complained loudly the entire way. The last few turns had to rely on power by armstrong to make the turn. 

When I got home, I checked the power steering fluid reservoir. The fluid didn't even reach the end of the dipstick. After I parked at home, I saw fluid dripping under the front of the van.

That was it.

More than 22 years after Walt Hobbs helped us get into the big van business, Annette and I decided it was time for us to get out.

Our friend and current bishop, Brent Morgan, was interested in buying the van. He came over, and I walked him through everything that was wrong with it and explained what we had been doing with it.

On Saturday, September 19, 2026, we sold him the van for $1,000.

The license plates and final registration sticker from our GMC.
Another small reminder that the big van era is over.

It had 186,573 miles on it.

Brent came by to tow it away on September 21, 2026.

It was hard to watch it go.

For more than two decades, a 15-passenger van was part of our family. We bought the first one because our sixth child was on the way, and we had outgrown a seven-passenger minivan. By the time we bought the GMC, we had eight kids. We needed a vehicle that could carry our whole family and still have room for all the stuff that went along with us.

Empty driveway after the van is gone.
The Ranger looks pretty small sitting in the van's old spot.

We paid $43,000 for that GMC in 2009. Sixteen years and more than 186,000 miles later, I think we got our money's worth.

But the miles aren't really what I will remember.

I will remember loading kids and suitcases into it for trips to Utah and Wyoming, all around Texas, and to Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. I will remember Annette driving that enormous van everywhere as if it were an ordinary commuter car. I will remember all eight of our kids piled inside and the many family trips we took together. I will remember each child's nervousness as they got to drive it for the first time. 

Mostly, I will remember the years when we needed a 15-passenger van.

Those years are over now. Our babies grew up. All eight graduated from high school and left home. We don't need a big van anymore.

It is another marker that our child-rearing years are coming to a close. I am nostalgic for those years, and I miss having our babies around.

But there is another stage ahead of us.

After more than two decades in the big van business, Annette and I are moving on to the adult-children-advising and grandchildren-spoiling business.

I think we'll like that business too.