Carpooling website

Saw this on Dragons' Den this past weekend. Its called Kangaride and it matches people traveling between cities with people looking for rides. It could be a great way to help pay for fuel costs as I know there are many members who do a lot of travelling. Yuri is one person that comes to mind that can certainly offer a seat or two and offset his fuel costs with the insane amount of driving he does.

It was started in Quebec, so most of the members are there. But with the recent exposure on Dragons' Den, I'm sure there will be new members signing up from all over Canada. The sad thing is, I thought of this concept about 15 years ago when I used to commute from Ajax to Sherbrooke (700km one way) every second weekend to see my then girlfriend. I never did pursue it. Oh well, I am glad someone has and it is now available. I signed up today and thought I would post it here in case anyone else might be interested. There is a free trial if you sign up before April 19th.

www.kangaride.com

Since you mentioned my name...

A word of caution: someone who knows about these things should chime in about the insurance implications of this... I believe (and I'm not a lawyer nor do I play one on television) that if you accept payment for transporting someone - even if only a share of the fuel expense, your insurance company could deny coverage in case of an accident.

Just a thought.

Yuri. (trying to keep up my membership in Spoilsports-R-Us...)

http://www.pickuppal.com/

It's been around for awhile with quite a bit of activity in Southern Ontario.

Not a new idea at all. Something like that was around about 40 maybe even 50 years ago already and NO membership fees!
Adding on to Yuri's comment, if an accident were to happen in todays world the "paying" passengers could sue your a s s off and your insurance would just laugh at you.

Part of why some other websites were shut down on the insurance side is bit of a farce. There were no cases of people being sued by passengers. The problem came from the bus companies lobbying have the car pool sites shut down after some people started running routes to compete with the bus lines. Car pooling should not cause you a problem. I checked with State Farm when I was with them, and RBC since I'm with them now. As long as you're REALLY car pooling (driving with others while going to or from work) and not driving a route just to make extra cash, you're covered. Even if other people in your car pool don't drive, it is still car pooling. Once you start regular routes and have different people each time you could be in a bad spot though.

What it you are always the driver and carry a full minivan load of your co workers and charge them way more than the cost of fuel? A coworker does this and the money easily pays for the van payments. They always go from the same place to the same place.

imo000 said:

What it you are always the driver and carry a full minivan load of your co workers and charge them way more than the cost of fuel? A coworker does this and the money easily pays for the van payments. They always go from the same place to the same place.

Click to expand...

that's not car-pooling, that is operating a taxi service.