Google Employee's Daily Commute Is Super Short

Written By MARTIN HENDERSON (Patch Staff)
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For a guy working in a technology company, this housing solution is pretty low tech—but gets high marks for creativity.

A Google engineer has set up living quarters in the bed of a 128 square foot box truck that sits in one of the technology giant’s Mountain View parking lots. No, it’s not on cinder blocks.

According to television station KRON, the young Massachusetts man—known only as Brandon—is saving 90 percent of his salary in order to pay off student loans.

The truck cost $10,000, which his signing bonus covered. It’s a much better deal than the $2,180 it would cost him, on average, for a Mountain View studio. He still gets dinged about $121 monthly for insurance on the truck.

He has been living in his 8 mpg home since he began working May 28 and been chronicling his journey in a blog, “Thoughts From Inside the Box.”

It’s pretty sparse inside the 16-foot truck with a bed, a drawer and a rod to hang his clothes. Basically, it’s where he sleeps. He showers and eats at Google, where the meals are free. He can also work out and do his laundry on the Google campus, so for a driven 23-year-old, he’s golden.

Face it, Google has perks.

KRON estimated the engineer probably pulls down close to $100,000 in salary. And there’s another perk that most employees don’t get: Free land, albeit between a couple of white lines.

However, his idea isn’t wholly original. A programmer, Ben Driscoe, lived 13 months in the Google lot in a 21-year-old van conversion from 2011-13. Driscoe says he paid $1,800 for the 1990 GMC Vandura and that was his only rent.

“Google Security came by very early on,” Driscoe wrote, ”but once they determined that the guy in the mysteriously parked white van was just an eccentric Googler and not the Unabomber, they never came by again.”

That, apparently, was Brandon’s inspiration to take it to the parking lot. However, he said, he wanted something more personal than a van.

So he got the truck.

Surprisingly, living in a truck hasn’t completely obliterated his social life, either.

Over the summer, he hosted a truck-warming party. He also met an intern. She lives in a nearby camper.

-KRON, Washington Post and Martin Henderson contributed; box truck via KRON