Carpool made simple

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Vestavia residents create CoolBus app to coordinate kids’ transport

Vestavia Hills residents John and Sarah Wright have three children. G.W. is in seventh grade at Pizitz Middle School and plays tennis. Lucy Kate does tumbling and acrobatics, and she’s in third grade at Vestavia Hills Elementary Dolly Ridge. Sadie is in kindergarten, also at Dolly Ridge, and participates in acrobatics.

So when only two parents are available to drive three children to two school buildings and four different extracurricular activities, the math doesn’t add up.

One day late in 2018, John and Sarah were sitting in their kitchen drinking coffee talking about their day when John found a solution.

“I don’t know why I had the idea — I wasn’t thinking about it — but I told Sarah my idea for CoolBus. I said, ‘What if we start a business that helps parents find rides for their kids?’” John said. “Sarah said, ‘John, I think that’s what you need to do next.’”

CoolBus is an app that allows parents to connect to other parents for carpooling.

Here’s how it works: You open the app, and after syncing your contacts to the app, you click “Find a ride.” You enter the to and from addresses of where you need a ride. You select how many of your children will need the ride. Then, you enter the date and time of the ride so you can plan in advance and give parents time to offer a ride. You can also offer gas money to who gives a ride.

Once you submit your ride, you’ll be able to see other people within your contacts and extended circle who are also going to the same place at the same time.

You can also see how you’re connected to that person — you might not have that person in your contacts, but it could be your trusted friend’s contact (you can choose trusted friends in the app). You can request a ride from that person, and the other person can request or deny it (and the other person doesn’t know if you deny a request).

Once the ride is approved, the two parents can use the chat function and discuss details of the ride.

If none of your contacts are available for the ride, you can also post the ride to a job board, where people from outside of your contact list can volunteer to drive for your children. This part is optional — if you want to keep your ride only visible to your contacts, then you can omit this part.

“It’s a great way for moms or people looking for supplemental income,” Sarah said. “They’re like, hey, I’m already out driving anyway, I’m going to make a little money.”

In the spring of 2019, the CoolBus team held focus groups of parents, and in one of them, the first question asked was “What do you do?” John said the first mom who responded said, “What don’t I do? I’m basically a glorified Uber driver. I just drive my kids around all day.”

Hearing that response felt reassuring, Sarah said.

“If someone can use this to help them be balanced and also financially help other people out in the process, I consider that a great victory for us,” she said. “We had a need. We wanted to create something that would help parents and give them opportunity. I used to feel like, if I could just have one evening where someone could help get my older two kids where they needed to go, I could get the other one bathed and supper made.”

CoolBus isn’t a rideshare service like Uber or Lyft, though, and parents can make sure only trusted contacts or mutual friends drive their children. Also unlike a rideshare service, CoolBus does best when rides are planned in advance.

There’s a subscription fee of $9.99 a month for the service, and offering gas money to drivers is an optional additional cost. For those who use the Vestavia Hills PTO code for CoolBus’ Dollars for Downloads program, one dollar from each month of subscription will go to the Vestavia Hills PTO.

Visit coolbus.com for more information. You can also download the app using your mobile phone’s app store.