Frequently Asked Questions about Carpoolable

If you have access to those services, great! Use them. However, much to the surprise of anyone born urban, such services simply do not exist anymore for rural areas. Low population density determines a lot about rural living. The economics of transit make providing nearly any rural transportation services hugely expensive. Bus service is nearly nonexistent. Uber and Lyft and taxis require high population density to even be a viable part-time job, and as a small business or side-gig, it just doesn't work rurally.

Carpoolable helps rural and rural-connected folks self-organize carpooling, whether occasionally or routinely, with folks going the same direction. A carpool cannot be a business: it's just splitting the costs of transportation. Carpoolable is not an on-call taxi service, and never will be. Carpoolable itself does not take a percentage, nor pay any drivers — the sharing of transit costs between Members is purely voluntary, and is between you two, three, or four. Because the carpool not a business for the Driver, but just shared transit, insurance coverage by anyone's normal car insurance is still in effect.

Carpoolable provides a suggested cost per kilometer (or per mile) and per Trip, and helps connect Members to make carpooling easy, convenient, and predictable. We expect all travelers — driver included — to share Trip costs. Nobody can try to make an income by driving others via Carpoolable; one can only decrease one's own travel costs. Carpoolable is designed to help enable folks from a rural region to organize their own shared transit, to save everybody money, and to decrease CO².

Today, Carpoolable is optimized for helping folks find carpoolers for longish or repeated Trips: to the Airport, or an Event, or commuting to work or school, or going to the larger town to shop. Those drivers might pick someone up along the way and drop them off along the way, but that functionality is not yet built in -- you'd have to figure it out yourself ("A to Z could include G to P -- worth asking"). We also try to name most towns in a region, but will always miss some. Use the nearest town, since we don't have street addresses in our database.

We continue to work on ways to expand the options, and if there's strong interest, we'll ramp up those capabilities fast.

Given the endemic status of respiratory ailments, and our heightened recognition of the risks of proximity, the default policy is that a face mask should be worn by all Travelers, unless there is explicit agreement from every member sharing a Carpoolable Trip. If any Traveler feels strongly that they must be mask-free, they should inform the others prior to the Trip, as part of the Trip description. Any Driver can require masks, and can flatly reject any passenger who refuses; similarly, a Driver could specify a "mask free" Trip as a "Special Request," and Travelers can decide if they want to join the Trip or not.

Currently, we're just getting warmed up, and learning from our two primary geographies: Atlantic Canada, and the "US Heartland" intersection of southern Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. We have Demo versions for the eight Carpoolable Regions for each, and are taking pre-registrations ahead of "going live" on July 1 (for Canada) and July 4 (for the US). Each site (as of April 2026), has operational Membership sites, for community members to sign up for, as well as demo.

If your locale isn't in these two lovely areas, you can indicate your interest by signing up.

Yes. It's optimized for mobile for all tasks, although creating and finding Trips is easier with a larger screen. You can use the QR code on the Dashboard to install Carpoolable on your phone, which can allow Notifications and enable easy contacts with others about Trips.

You don't pay us for travel! Instead, you share the Trip's cost between all Travelers including the Driver. By paying the Driver your proportion of the suggested total cost of the Trip, the costs are equally shared. The cost is currently assessed at around $0.20 per kilometer. We display those costs and their splits on the Trip page. With one Carpoolable Passenger, those Trip costs are split 50/50 with the Driver. With two or three Passengers, it's split in thirds or in fourths. Basically, the more Travelers, the cheaper it is per Traveler, for the Driver and for each Passenger. We do the calculating for you, and you work out the payment: cash, e-transfer, or you can trade off driving a commute.

You save at least half, perhaps two thirds, and even three-quarters of the cost of driving alone. In exchange, you may need to be a little flexible in your route and timing. The Driver has the final say on the travel and meet-up times (within reason), knowing that most Passengers could be Drivers if they needed. Use either the site's communications tool to coordinate these arrangements, or direct contact via email, or text, or cell call. Note: No Driver is required to take anybody along.

You also are significantly reducing the carbon costs of your Trip, by essentially saving the exhaust of the single-person travel that the other Passengers didn't take.

You save at least half, perhaps two thirds, and even three-quarters of the cost of driving yourself. In exchange, you may have to be flexible. The Driver has the final say on the travel times (within reason), knowing that most Passengers could be Drivers if they needed to be.

You also are significantly reducing the carbon costs of your travel, by essentially saving the exhaust of the car you didn't take.

Our hope is to pay the costs of providing this service (including a salary or two) via Tips alone.

"Tips!" you may say, with derision. But actually, we think that if even small proportion our Members give us a tip of a few bucks, for an exceptional service saving them far more — then we should be able to survive financially and pay a few salaries. If not, then we may look for alternatives: Sponsors, grant funding, community funding, or other means could be possible. All have different pros and cons.

We have designed the Carpoolable sites to be (relatively) inexpensive to start up and maintain, and (relatively) easy to administer, but there are still significant costs that must be eventually recovered. Our first goal this year is to see it being used; our next goal is to see it succeed by being used repeatedly. Only then will we seek our third goal: to be sure that we are financially sustainable, so we can expand while paying for our expansion.

I'm Michael Jensen, the founder (and funder) of Carpoolable, and of other similar projects. I'm 68. I don't need or even want an IPO. I don't need or even want gigantic wealth. I want to see this idea succeed wildly, and succeed honourably. I want this project to be financially sustainable, to support other projects, pay good salaries, and pay freelancers good rates, so we can be highly effective at saving people money while reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

The world is burning, and this is my drop in the bucket to throw at the fire. If I'm lucky enough to succeed, I will do my level best to build a business model for this service that is equitable, ethical, sustainable, and purposeful.

And no, I won't sell your personal data. Those companies are parasites.

Carpoolable is built to help rural folks plan for shared Trips. Rarely does a rural driver decide to travel far away, on a whim. In general, for real-life activities that have carbon costs, our transit systems probably should not facilitate whims anymore anyway…

Rural trips of some distance require a little arranging, and last-minute arranging is usually the dumbest. For the kinds of rides that Carpoolable can help arrange, at least 24 hours of potential planning time is required, by default. We provide a tool to send Members a Notification and an email, and pretty quickly, you both should likely share direct contact information — especially useful for certain circumstances (like one-way Trips to or from an airport).

And honestly, if you're in a hurry, or in dire need — then go ahead and drive yourself, and plan earlier next time, to save some money and CO².

We recently integrated Commuting into the system, addressing the needs of rural-to-work commuters. The model is based on the same principle of helping people going the same direction find each other, and then help them contact each other.

Commuters, once a connection is made, can simply stay in contact, not even using Carpoolable beyond the initial contact. That said, non-commuters could occasionally join your commute Trip, saving everyone a little money, that day.

The arrangements between Driver and Riders are, as always, up to them. Carpoolable can only make recommendations. In this case, we recommend you use the same suggested "cost per kilometer/mile" model for dividing the Trip. It's just simpler that way.

Carpoolable has no absolute requirement for a car, but it's optimized for having folks meet at an agreed-upon spot (a community hall or church parking lot, a convenient corner or library), and to then continue on to a destination. Carpool drivers can't be expected to go far out of their way.; it's a balance of equals sharing the trouble and cost of the Trip. No Driver is required to accept any potential Passenger's request, and there are options: You can ask a friend to take you to the meeting spot, to meet the Driver.

That said, most people are happy to help a little, especially if it doesn't cost them much but a little time. If, as a Driver, you have time, and you're feeling neighborly and are willing to pick up a neighbor down the road, then the system can help calculate the cost of the extra pick-up kilometers. As always, arrangements between Driver and Passengers are up to the two of you, and should be discussed and resolved ahead of time.

If you pay the Driver for your portion of the Trip, the chances are good — though Yes is a choice only you (as a Driver) can make. However, it's a win-win: it saves one person the time, and saves you both CO² and money. That request ("Will you pick something up for me?") is currently not a special option built into the system. You would need to self-organize: communicate with the Driver directly through Carpoolable to start, and discuss the specifics. When you meet, to pick up the thing from the Driver, you'd pay your proportion of the Trip cost, as if you had travelled along and made the pick-up yourself. If we find this is a really desirable feature for our Members (both Driver and Passenger), we can make it even easier to make such a request within Carpoolable.

Ultimately, this is a choice the Driver needs to make. Any Driver can say "no" to any Trip request; the Driver is "in charge" of such matters. Some Drivers may not be willing to take kids, and the Passenger (and kid) should not take offense at this. Others tend to be delighted by children. We recommend that a full "seat share" be paid by the parent for the kid, as well as him/herself (since a seat is a seat), and have full disclosure in discussions ahead of time (i.e. "my nine-year-old will be with me. She's a little chatterbox, so if it's a problem let me know.").

The data you share with others while using Carpoolable needs to be under your control. We don't make anyone's personal information public, and we let you choose what data is shared with average Members, vs what is shared with Members you are in discussions with about a Carpool. We provide an auto-generated "greyscale" version of your Selfie that you can choose to use for general membership; there's a "Display Name" nickname you can use if you want. We let you choose what is visible to others.

We also can act as an intermediary for communications: no need to share your email address if you don't want to, at first -- we provide a tool to send Notifications and emails to any Member you are in contact with, about a prospective Carpool.

But at the other end of the spectrum, we also let you choose what to share in a Contact card for importing into the other's phone's contacts. We encourage you to exchange information directly with other Members, and we provide tools to help Members do that.

The balance between privacy and safety is complicated.

Carpoolable does NOT need or want to record any financial information about you, or any of our Members. No street addresses are recorded, and no CC/PIN/SIN/SSN numbers. This radically decreases the attractiveness of our information and service to hackers, identity thieves, or data robots. We of course take prudent care of our systems, but AI makes security complicated.

We also need you to be able to trust other Carpoolable Members, who are essentially strangers to you. To help that, we require that the system hold certain level of personal information, which a Member can choose to share, in what contexts, with other Members.

The most seemingly-invasive part of that is requiring a picture of your ID -- usually a driver's license. We try to auto-identify numbers and black them out, and provide you a tool to black out any info that make you nervous. This approach allows other Members to see that you're legitimate, but without as much risk to you. Note the sample of Founder Michael Jensen's ID. We also require a Selfie, a "Car Selfie" with license plate, your cell number, and your email address -- but YOU decide which of those is displayed to other Members, or to Members you are in contact with, about an upcoming Carpool.

Your "Public Profile" should be as open as you are willing to be -- and as you would want others to be. Initial contact is through Carpoolable, and then we assume you will communicate mostly through text and email, on your own. But please, stay engaged with Carpoolable enough to take advantage of the system's Contact import tools, Calendar updates, and our "Trip Pix" and "Cheese-able" tools, and other things that make Carpoolable helpful as well as safer.

Until it becomes necessary, we are finding that search actually wastes more time than it helps, in Carpoolable. So far, good filters on dates and locales, and "hometown" constraints, and visual cues, provide the best approach to identifying Trips that you might want to join.

Currently there is none. If Carpoolable becomes a rollicking success, then it makes sense, but right now the business model is to sadly shake our heads and say "we will respond as soon as we are able." As a new free site that has no business model (beyond tips, for saving you money), we cannot afford direct tech support. And we refuse to use shitty AI chatbots to "answer" tech support questions.

However, we very much need to hear from you. We want to make this the best tool possible for helping save everyone money, and save CO2.

The Demo site has side slider that's linked to a feedback form. This lets you type in what you're experiencing. We might be able to get back to you. Carpoolable is new, and so we expect hiccups. Please let us know what you find!

Unless otherwise arranged, we recommend that Rider A sits in the front passenger seat, Rider B sits behind the front passenger seat, and Rider C sits behind the Driver.