The Baked Bean Car Club'
Adrienne Campbell 01273 479018
Baked Bean Car Club Started in Sept 2006, an informal car club between four friends. We all needed a car at the same time; we agreed that anyone entering the club had to pay £75 non-refundable deposit as a disincentive to having a mass of people on the books. We had two meetings, one to agree the broad shape and one to refine it. We had a third meeting three months later, to refine the process - at which point we put up the hourly rate from £1 to £1.20. At the annual review we raised that to £1.50 as repairs were higher than expected and we need to build up more of a fund for replacement. We worked out the hourly rate by adding up the potential annual costs, including replacing the car over 3 or more years, estimating the annual hourly use and dividing one by the other. Turnover in the first year was about £2,000.
Car A little Daewoo Matiz that was owned by one of the group. (Try to involve someone who wants to share their car rather than buying new.)
Ownership The car was donated by the owner; however we’ve accumulated enough money in the kitty after 18 months to pay her the price it was valued at the time we started the car club (£600). Another way to do this is to pay the owner a monthly amount for the duration of the lifetime of the car, aiming to pay them off over say 2 years. The risk of the car dying prematurely is then shared.
Parking It has been parked in various places, initially on a drive but more recently on the road. We persuaded the people running the NCP scheme to allow us to have a permit that is for all the zones in town, not just the one where the owner lives.
Booking: We use an online Google calendar, which is easy to set up and works well most of the time. Sometimes we resort to phoning if we need the car spontaneously and are not near a computer. With a bigger car club we’d have someone on the end of a phone to take bookings.
Petrol: We set the mileometer to zero before each journey. We try to fill up after long journeys, but for short journeys we just put 15p per mile (it started at 10p per mile but has been increased along with fuel prices) in the kitty after the journey. That works well. The person filling up then takes the kitty money.
Hourly rate: The hourly rate is £1.50 per hour. We pay the monthly amount in cash at the end of each month. That seems to cover all our costs, including tax, mot, insurance (we have an any driver insurance) and repairs, as well as an amount accumulating for replacing the car after 3 years. We’re opening a Community account at the Cooperative Bank to start transferring funds by direct debit, to raise the level of professionalism and spreadability; until now, though, cash has worked fine
Repairs The owner has taken care of repairs until now but we’re going to start a new system soon where different roles are shared out: ownership (insurance, MOT, parking); repair and cleaning; financial.
Cleaning: We keep the car tidy and one of us cleans it at the end of each month, a job worth £5 either at the car wash or paying a child...
Tips: This system works on trust and willingness to stick with the system, ie not deliver it late or make a mess. Subscribe to carPlus, a non-profit firm that promotes car club use - they have a useful Toolkit for people starting car clubs. Maybe start at even higher than £1.50 an hour and share out any surplus at the end of the year.
Benefits: Huge! I've been able to give up all the hassles of car ownership. I save lots of money: my costs have at least halved. I walk more (to collect the car, not using it for small trips because it's easy); I buy less and plan better. I love being part of the car club community and get to feel virtuous.
yours2share yours2share enables people to find like-minded people to share any valuable assets, one of which is cars. I’m keen to promote informal car clubs – they are a brilliant idea and I think a lot of people would be interested if only they knew about them and had some examples of how they can work.
yours2share is a free to use website – it’s works like a dating agency, but bringing like-minded people together to share things. If you are looking to increase the number of people involved, or create a new informal car club, you can post an ad with yours2share asking for anyone who is interested – it doesn’t cost anything.
Sophie Garrett, yours2share
The Baked Bean Car Club (some of us!)
Get involved: contact one of the Group contacts on the Groups page
