Here’s one why you shouldn’t.
There is nothing you can say against carpooling.
It is good for the environment, good on the pocket, easy on infrastructure, a great way to connect, and a lot more.
But here’s one thing you shouldn’t use it for.
Making money.
If you are looking to make money by offering rides in your car, then carpooling is not the right thing to do.
One, it goes against the terms of private car ownership, that states that you can’t profit from using a personal vehicle for commercial use.
Another, when carpooling is used to generate profits for the car owner, the focus shifts from finding people with common routes and time to finding people who are willing to pay for a journey. Which makes the connections fraught with risks for both the parties. The transport systems that are set up to fill this need come with guard rails, filters and checks that prevent this. A carpooling ecosystem works on connections that share not just the route and time, but also the ride cost.
Car owner or Driver (or Pooler) – included.
At ePoolers, we have built a Dynamic Pricing Algorithm that takes into account the vehicle type, its make, model, year, fuel type, city of origin, number of riders, and then automatically calculate the ride cost, and distribute it among everyone in a ride. With the Car owner / Pooler counted among them.
This is done to ensure that no cash transactions take place, nor is there any room for any dispute. And because the Pooler/ Car owner pays her or his own share, those offering rides have no incentive to do it other than to split the commute costs, without getting inconvenienced.
Or, quite simply, there is no reason for people on the ePoolers platform to go out of their way to find riders. Literally. Because it won’t make them money. But it will do what carpooling is meant to do – make the roads more open, less congested, and bring down the cost of daily commute for everyone.
Happy Pooling!
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