How to Plan for a Carpool with Your Officemates

One of the best ways to save gas is to carpool and among the situations you'd benefit from the most would be in the office. You could bring your car today then the other person tomorrow and if you have another officemate, he/she could drive the following day. It saves you at least 1 full trip of gas a week. My friend and I did this for a while and it worked for us. It resulted to less spending, more savings and much less stress. Let me share some of the things we considered.

If you or your partners stay somewhere on the way to the office, then you are in luck. You just have to wait at your place for your friends to come pick you up or drop you off. Plan on the roads you'll be taking from the place of the one with the car until you reach the office. Consider the pick up points of the people in between. If you can plan the exact roads to go through considering the possible volume of the car based on the time of day, type of road (whether it's a main road or not) then the better. The less time and distance your travel takes, the more gas you usually save. Also plan on your way back since the traffic situation may be different from the one in the morning.

Even though you work at the same company, there's a chance that your schedules may not be the same. In our industry, we change schedules everyday and between me and my friends who carpool, we sometimes have a difference of 15 minutes up to 3 hours on our shifts. It's perfectly fine to adjust for 30 minutes.

Let's say I start at 6:00 am and he starts at 6:30. It's perfectly fine for me if he picks me up let's say 5:30 am. On the other hand, it's also perfectly okay if it's my turn to bring a car and I pick him up at a meeting point early on. But if you have a difference of around 45 minutes or more between your schedules, it might be troublesome for the one who has to come in too early or wait for the other one to finish his/her shift.

There may be times that you have to adapt to certain special situations. Here in Manila, we have a color coding scheme where cars ending in 1 and 2 are not allowed on the streets at certain periods of time on Mondays, 3 and 4 on Tuesdays, 5 and 6 Wednesdays, 7 and 8 on Thursdays and finally 9 and 0 on Fridays. Make sure you plan your week so that the one who isn't affected by this color coding scheme is the one bringing the car on that day.

If you really want to save on gas and have an officemate who also has a car and lives either on your way to the office or near you, why not carpool? You don't have to worry too much about the parking space since you only have 1 car. It can also save the environment at the least since there's 1 less car on the road. Plus, it's almost always a pleasure to have a passenger than drive alone.