Montpelier Energy Team :Transportation

Notes on forming a legal Cooperative Pickup-truck

Based on joslyn Wilschek's meeting with Annie Bouron of Car-share Vermont. Questions at bottom.

Filename: Notes_on_Coop_Pickup-truck.doc ( download )

Size: 41 KB

Document type: application/msword ( Replace description with document text )

Transportation Team

Notes on formation of a legal “Cooperative Pickup-truck”

Joslyn spoke with Annie Bourdon, the director of Car Share Vermont (“Car Share”), on January 18, 2010, explaining the Met Transportation Team’s investigation of friends/neighbors legally co-owning/operating a pick-up truck. Listed here are the steps Annie says we’d need to take, with issues we would need to consider:

Obtain a rental license from the State of Vermont, which costs $1000.
Obtain insurance. This is a major issue and the insurance carrier will require many different things. The entity that would be insured must be a car sharing organization formed for such purpose. The insurance covers the vehicle not the people.
Car Share uses Philadelphia Insurance. Car Share wanted to go with a company that had experience with car sharing; not many do.
The insurance companies require that the users of the vehicles be members of the organization.
The organization must have a process whereby it obtains the driving record for those who would like to use the cars. Two years of driving is generally required. However, if the person has less than two years, that person may still be able to use the car, but they need to jump through more hoops.
Driving records costs between $12 and $35 to obtain.
Car Share has two full time staff that process the applications for members.
You need to have someone on call 24/7 in the event someone using the car needs help.
This is an expensive operation. They subsidize through fundraising and grants.
In addition to the above expenses, other expenses include, technology required to use keys and maintenance of cars.

Car Share requires folks who only want to use the cars a few times a month to pay a $35 application fee and a $5 monthly fee. Then, the user pays about $8 per hour for the car, which includes gas. The $35 fee barely covers the costs incurred to process the application and the membership handbook. If you only wanted to use a car once, you could pay the $5 monthly fee and application fee and then cancel after you use the car.

After listing all of these issues, Annie suggested that Car Share and MET pair up. Car Share is interested in expanding into other towns and purchasing a pick up truck. It will need to fundraise to buy the pick-up truck. It will need local Montpelier volunteers to educate the community about the program in Montpelier/ shovel off the truck if needed/ and provide other assistance. Based on all the issues she raised, I thought that was a great idea and invited her to come speak with the MET, transportation group.

[Added by Barry] Both a “[Author ID1: at Wed Feb 3 16:21:00 2010 ]small close group of friends/neighbors[Author ID1: at Wed Feb 3 16:21:00 2010 ]” and a “[Author ID1: at Wed Feb 3 16:21:00 2010 ]large dispersed group[Author ID1: at Wed Feb 3 16:21:00 2010 ]” were discussed; Annie’s opinion was that the above points pertain to both.[Author ID1: at Wed Feb 3 16:21:00 2010 ]

Questions:

must an informal small group co-own in order to co-operate?
Do all insurance carriers have the requirements listed above?
The “many different things” that an insurance carrier will require – are they listed above or are there more?
What steps and costs are involved in users of the vehicles becoming members of the car-sharing organization? Are they only the ones listed??
Obtaining driving records ($12-35)
Have one member on-call at any time
So if a group decided to go ahead and share a pickup (or car), would the overall costs per vehicle-sharing group include only these?:
Cost of pickup truck
rental license - $1,000
Obtaining driving records - $12-35/member
Policy cost - $___?___