Camperman vs Cruisin Motorhomes

Both hire from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Cairns; Cruisin adds Perth, and neither is priced here in Adelaide or Darwin, though Cruisin’s head office sits beside a Hobart branch this site’s live search does not yet price. Both include bedding on every booking, and both keep you on sealed roads — none of Camperman’s four models carries this market’s unsealed-roads clearance, and Cruisin allows only a well-maintained access road of under twelve kilometres to a recognised campground. The shapes are otherwise opposite. Camperman runs four Toyota HiAce hi-top conversions from a Cairns base — the Paradise Family 5, the Maxie-4 Deluxe, the Maxie 2-3 and the Juliette 3 — with the vehicle count unpublished, a fridge of 55 litres on the Juliette 3 against 80 on the rest, and transmission fixed per model rather than chosen at booking, two of the four being manual. Cruisin, founded in Tasmania in 1999 by Dennis and Tina Lucas and still owned by them, runs eight automatic diesels from two to six berths, publishes an age ceiling of four years with the two Deluxe models under two, and includes made-up beds with linen and towels, unlimited kilometres and up to three drivers.

The money is structured so differently that the daily rate is the smallest part of it. Camperman’s own site states a A$500 damage excess, and a separate page describes a A$500 security bond taken as a credit card hold at pickup, without making clear whether that is one figure or two; a single-vehicle accident, an animal strike or reversing into a fixed object included, adds a further A$250, and no windscreen, tyre or excess-reduction product is published at all. Cruisin leaves you liable for A$5,000 per claim and debits — rather than holds — A$5,000 to a physical credit card at pickup, with a surcharge of 2.15 per cent on Visa or 2.18 on Mastercard and refunds taking up to 14 working days, but it sells that exposure down: A$45 a day removes both the liability and the bond, and A$55 a day adds windscreen, tyre, single-vehicle rollover, overhead and underbody damage, with a A$75 administration fee per claim. Awning, water and salt damage sit outside every tier. Cancellation runs the same way round: Cruisin charges nothing 29 or more days out, then 25 per cent, then 50, and the full rental on the day, while Camperman charges A$200 even at thirty days’ notice and keeps deposits up to A$200 at every stage.

What the booking commits you to separates them again. Cruisin’s shortest hire is five days, seven from Perth and ten between 26 December and 6 January, a one-way adds A$165 and route minimums of ten to twenty-one days, days are billed per calendar day, and every mainland branch closes on Sunday with no after-hours pickup at any price. Camperman publishes no minimum hire length and will hand over on a Sunday or out of hours for A$110, though its staffed weekday pickup window runs only 10:00 to 15:00. On the road the two fail in the same place to different degrees: neither warms the living area off a powered site, and Camperman carries no heater of any kind with air conditioning in the cab alone, while Cruisin’s heater and living-area air-conditioner are 240-volt, leaving a 12-volt fan and a 160-watt solar panel when you are not plugged in. What Cruisin has is a shower and cassette toilet on seven of eight models, which decides how many nights need a campsite. The review records track the fleets: Camperman holds 4.4 on Google from 62 reviews and 4.1 on Trustpilot from 120, cosmetic age its one recurring complaint; Cruisin holds 4.6 from 3,958 and 4.8 from 1,317, with a thin one-star tail about mid-trip faults, slow bond refunds and disputed damage charges.