Built by engineers who lived the van life
A small Salt Lake City shop that builds a few vans a year and keeps a lot more on the road.
How it started
I'm Greg Palis, founder of Alt Life Vans. As an electrical engineering student, I got hooked on rock climbing and spent a summer living and working in Alaska and traveling the Intermountain West. The people and places I found made me want a different kind of life: one where I could live and play in wild places with the essentials and nothing more.
I built my first van in a driveway, with a lot of trial and error, and it became my full-time home for a year and a half. It also brought me to Salt Lake City. A few years later I started building vans again, this time for other people.
That was 2018. I only ever wanted to build a few beautiful vans a year, work with a few great clients, and deliver vans I was proud of. That is still the plan.
The shop today
Brandon Jesewitz, a mechanical engineer, joined the shop and now manages most of our projects. That means every van has both an electrical and a mechanical engineer working on it. These days most of our work is upgrades and repairs on vans people already own, from DIY builds to factory Revels, plus a few full custom builds each year.
The crew
Greg Palis
Founder. Electrical engineer who designs our power systems and still builds in the shop.
Brandon Jesewitz
Project lead. Mechanical engineer and your main contact from first call to pickup.
Breck
Builds in the shop and films our build videos.
Charlie
Shop dog. Will say hi when you visit.
Visit the shop
We are in Emigration Canyon, about ten minutes up from the University of Utah. Visits are by appointment so someone is free to walk you through it.
6771 Emigration Canyon Rd, Salt Lake City, UT 84108
Mon to Fri, 11am to 6pm
Tell us about your van
Send a few details and we will call you back with ideas, options and a ballpark.
- 6771 Emigration Canyon Rd, Salt Lake City
Office visits by appointment - 5.0 on Google from 39 reviews
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