Transportation How to Set Up a Carpool in Your Area

By now you have probably figured out that running a car is very expensive. You have to pay for gas, repairs, maintenance, parking, cleaning, and more. Carpooling may be sounding like a good idea to you, and it is. But perhaps there’s no carpool available in your area. How do you go about starting a carpool of your own?

It’s not as hard as it seems. There are bound to be lots of other people in your community who want and need to carpool too. It’s just a matter of organization. Even though you’ll be the one championing the cause, you’ll soon find that the idea will start to grow by word of mouth.

Start with your Chamber of Commerce. Ask if you can post on their website or in their publication. Tell them you are looking to start a carpool in your area and are seeking interested people. You may choose to set up an email address just for this purpose. That way you’ll avoid taking requests (or junk mail) in your personal or work email. Make it something professional sounding like carpoolseattle@gmail.com.

Next, try your local coffee house. They may let you put up fliers, which you can easily make on your computer, that ask if anyone’s interested in a carpool to the place you’re going. You can also try other hot spots, like the library or the gym. You might ask churches as well if you can post a flier in their hallway or bulletin.

Another smart way to go about carpooling to the office is to ask the Human Resources department at work if there’s anything set up already. You might find that it was a program they once did but people lost interest. Get everyone interested again. Ask if you can get their help with putting the notice in the company newsletter or post it on bulletin boards. They may even offer to put a little flier in with paychecks on pay day.

If there isn’t already a carpool club at work, start one. Since you all come to the same place, chances are that someone will be interested in sharing the costs of getting there with you. Ask in your department first since you probably know where each person lives and comes from. Then start branching out to the next department. Don’t send a company-wide email unless you have permission from your boss. You don’t want to ruffle any feathers.

You may be pleasantly surprised at how many responses you get. Keep track of each person’s email and phone number as they express interest. It’s easiest if you can send a group email to everyone who responded rather than having to call everyone.

Meet in the break room for five minutes once you get enough interest. You can introduce yourselves and see if you have enough for two or more cars. You’ll be making new friends and maybe even new work relationships that will help you in your career.

Next, create a list of suggested rules. They might include simple etiquette points. It’s better to be up front than to have someone step on toes later on. Details of etiquette might be what time the pickups can be expected, what to do if you are sick and can’t drive, who to call in bad weather if you need someone else to drive, etc. Discuss whether anyone objects to people eating or smoking in their car. And you might make a suggestion that the carpool stop for coffee at a drive through together so everyone can get their coffee before work. Whatever the group feels is necessary to get it going is fine.

All people in the carpool are expected to drive. If you’re lucky enough to have five people, each of you only drives once a week. That will be a huge savings in your monthly expenses. Each driver pays for their own gas on their day to drive and is expected to contact everyone early enough if they aren’t going to make it.

Make a simple schedule in Word or Excel that shows the monthly drivers. Map it out as far in advance as possible so that if someone has a conflict with a date they are supposed to drive, they can easily get a replacement.

Finally, have fun with it! Once you get your first set of carpoolers and word gets out what a good time you’re having and how much money you’re saving, you’re going to have other people wanting to join too. That’s when you can pass the baton. You organized the first one. Let the next person who’s interested start the next one up….and so on.

You’ll find that carpooling lifts the burden off you of always having to be at the wheel fighting traffic. When you’re a passenger, it’s much more relaxing.