Well I bought a '96 2500 van new and just traded it off this summer. It was body on frame and I don’t think they changed that before they quit building them. It was not rusty anywhere, not a tear on the interior anywhere, the engine, trany, power steering, the A/C, and differential had never been repaired. The engine had a lifter noise when first started and I was only getting about 13 MPG and the A/C was not cooling as well as it did for the first 14 years, and my brother and his wife was coming to visit for a month, and they just couldn’t stand heat and would be using the van so I traded for another minivan, my 3rd one, with rear A/C and heat.
BTW we took several trips with 8,9,or 10 people in it and it did good.