Mighty vs Cruisin Motorhomes

Both operators price the same five Australian cities on this site — Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Cairns and Perth — both bill by calendar day, so the pickup day and the return day each count, and both set a five-day floor before the seasonal and route exceptions begin. Both include linen, bedding and towels on every rental, and both confine the ordinary fleet to sealed roads, with the same narrow carve-out for a well-maintained access road under twelve kilometres to a campground. The businesses behind that are opposites. Mighty is the budget door into Tourism Holdings Limited’s Australian network: ten automatic models across two tiers, Mighty and the older MightyLITE, sharing depots, booking system and 24-hour roadside cover with Britz, Maui and Apollo, and adding Adelaide and Darwin to the five. Cruisin is a family firm founded in Tasmania in 1999 and still owned by the couple who started it, running eight automatic diesels from the five mainland cities plus its home branch in Hobart, which this site does not yet price. Cruisin makes up the beds per berth and includes unlimited kilometres and up to three drivers.

What the van contains is what separates them. Cruisin puts an onboard shower and cassette toilet with hot and cold water in seven of its eight models — only the 2 Berth Hi Top goes without — and publishes an age ceiling most independents do not: nothing over four years old, and under two on the 4 and 6 Berth Deluxe. Mighty splits the same question down the middle of its range. The Duo, Deuce, Deuce Plus, Double Up and Big Six carry a toilet, shower and hot pressurised water; the HiLITE, DeLITE, Highball and Double Down have a sink and cold water and nothing else, so washing means campground facilities every day; and the 4WD has an external cold shower and no toilet. Vehicle age tracks the same line, at four years on the road for Mighty and six or more for MightyLITE. Climate control is where they converge: neither heats the living area away from mains power. Cruisin fits a heating unit to every model that runs on a 240 V site only, with a plug-in fan heater at A$15 per hire; Mighty’s reverse-cycle heating is on the five bathroom models alone, also mains-only, and the other five have cab heating. Off-grid, Cruisin runs a 160 W solar panel on every model; Mighty fits one to six of ten.

The rest is where you may take it and what the whole booking costs. Mighty holds the only sanctioned route off the bitumen: the 4WD Camper, a pop-top two-berth with external kitchen, emergency beacon and recovery kit, 300 kilometres a day included before A$0.55 per kilometre or a A$299 unlimited package, with named tracks such as the Gibb River Road nominated at the branch. Cruisin has no 4WD and no paid way around the rule, so an unsealed leg means a different company. Timing cuts the other way. Every Cruisin mainland branch closes on Sundays and there is no after-hours pickup, with A$150 a day for an unauthorised late return; Mighty’s closures are seasonal instead — Darwin from 1 December to 7 March, Cairns on Sundays from October to March, Adelaide on Sundays from May to August — and no hire may start or end on a closed day. One-ways favour Cruisin on the fee and Mighty on the calendar: Cruisin charges A$165 but wants ten to twenty-one days, twenty-one for anything involving Perth, where Mighty charges A$200 between the eastern and southern capitals or A$300 where Perth, Darwin, Broome or Alice Springs is involved, and asks fourteen days for Sydney to Perth. Count that as days of hire you have to buy, not as a fee.