Finding people to share your rides is very easy in this day and age. The difficult part is to find people you trust and how committed they are to safety.
Sometimes setting up a carpool is more trouble than it’s worth. Fortunately, there are ways to avoid common mistakes that most people make to save time, money and fuel. So here are tips for you to start a carpool
Find a carpool program
Check if the school, Clubs or Business offer any carpool services or platform to carpool already. Its always good to use the tested ones if it is already setup else use Karpoolclub google sheet to create your own invitation for your community.
Find your families to carpool with
Find the families, drivers you want to partner with and connect with them before signing up. You may find your child’s friends looking for carpooling like you. Sign up for apps like the carpool club that will notify you about other users looking to join your group driving to the same destination. You can choose to accept or decline the invitation. Users only see group names not the members unless they join the group.
Create guidelines /rules for your groups
The most important things to discuss are
- Safe driving and no talking over the phone while driving. Use the track ride feature to let know other families where you are instead of texting or talking over phone
- Seat belts are important if you are traveling with children, no eating or drinking, no inappropriate music or talk shows
- Stick to the schedule, so it does not burden other commuters leading to delays. Setup schedule on the app, so it will send you a reminder a few hours before your ride
Constant Communication (not while driving)
- Maintain contact and update the group through secure chat for the group than texting or email them that might get lost with other information
- Understand the perks offered by the transportation department for carpools and subscribe for the same.
A business opportunity
Families are always looking for help to drive their children around. Your carpool may also become a revenue-making opportunity if you are connected with the community and would like to make some money on running additional errands or sharing driver perks. Many Vanpool businesses is run by parents for their schools and once they build this trust, the message spreads around.
If you don’t still know where to start and you have a club or school where you want to bring a carpool
a) Recommend families to download the Karpool app and choose your school or club as destination or starting point. The app automatically shows available groups to join or you can create groups invite other families.
b) If you want to gather community and then let parents create the group on they know their family partners, then you can use this sheet to sign up and
write to [email protected] so we can help you build the groups for you or help with Karpool App.
