Help settle an argument! - Car sharing costs

Doing a quick calculation, for an average of 30mpg about £15 a week is about reasonable..

Well for starters it depends on how many miles to the litre the car does to enable you to work out how much it would cost to do 110 miles.

But, i would take a stab in the dark and estimate £15

Thanks very much

when you say £15. Is that £15 each or the total petrol to be divide by 2?

Also I should have said the majority of the journey is 40 - 50 mph. Does that make a difference?

The £15 is for the 110 miles of the car at 30mpg...so you`d divide by 2.. £7.50.

MPG is variable, but as it was an average of 30mpg then you should be ok at that.

I worked it out thusly...

At that cost a gallon costs £4.73. If you uses 30mpg as an average economy I work it out as £17.34 for the cost of petrol used so half each would be £8.67.

I would probably ask for £10 then see how much it is actualy costing after a few weeks

I car share 3 days per week and always drive - 108 miles in total and I suggested £5 a week as that is half of what it costs me in diesel to cover the 100 miles or so.

Like others have said - I suppose it depends on the car though.

It really does, it costs me nearly double to do the same miles in my husbands guzzler than it does in my old lady jalopy

come on shooting star, tell us abouit the argument now

Just wanted to add that if someone was picking me up from my door and taking me/dropping me back to/from work each day I would round it up to £10.

If I was driving I would just ask for £8.50.

I would offer at least a tenner prob go to £15 if its their car every week as its not only petrol , tyres

oil

wear and tear

and i personally think that if someone is good enough to take you back and fore to work for that its cheaper than a bus or taxi etc

why ? are you the driver or the passenger

£6.60 based on my 2 litre saloon.

I'm basing my cost purely on petrol. If I were doing it on cost of running the bloody thing, I'd have to take into account £200 a month car loan repayment, £180 a year or something tax, £400 insurance, £800 a year servicing, £600 for a set of tyres. I wish I could lift share, grrrr.

I pick up and drop off two colleagues every day. My journey to work is 11.8 miles. I pick up the first colleague half a mile from home (at her door) and often end up taking her boyfriend to work too, as he works right where I stop to pick up colleague number 2 (at the end of her road), which is about 3 miles from starting point. I never asked either of them for any money, but both offered and pay me £10 a week each. This is way too much, but they both insist. They'd both have a walk, two trains, and a walk otherwise. £10 is less than they'd pay on the train and is warm, dry and door to door. For them it's worth it.

If you are driving to and from work on a daily basis anyway, and would do the journey regardless if the car sharer was there or not, then how much more does it cost to run a car with another person in? (I'm assuming the extra weight would increase the fuel consumption a tad, but not sure how much)

I'm assuming the person who drives woud do so even if they didn't share. As the driver I'd say 1/2 the cost of the fuel, as the passenger I'd also consider wheher the driver is incovenienced in any other way - eg has to get up earlier, drive out of their way or wait for me at all and whether it makes my life easier, eg reducing commute time or saving me money.

I must have been a bit of a sucker as when I used to give someone a lift to work, I didn't charge anything, even when they offered.

My view was that I was going there anyway, so would be spending the money on petrol regardless if they were in the car or not.

I would expect to pay roughly £12-£15 for that journey which is what my H was paying his brother for a lift to and from work. Now H has got a car they drive alternate weeks.

I know BIL would have been driving to work whether H was in the car or not but it wouldn't seem fair for H not to have payed him when the alternative was paying more to go on public transport with a longer journey time too.

The clue is in the term, car share ?

I think it is the social norm to share fuel costs isn't it?

Thanks,

So somewhere between £5 and £10 then seems about right.

Two of us live in the same town and work in the other town. However I live the same side of town as work so it makes sense that the other person drives - otherwise I'd spend about two hours driving him through heavy traffic back to his home and then back to mine (half an hour each way, twice a day).

He wants more than £10 per week which I thought was unreasonable as I worked out it only costs me £14 in petrol a week anyway to drive myself at a time that suits me. I think his petrol bill is more than mine because of the town traffic which he sits in getting across town twice a day (which he would have to do anyway whether or not he picked me up), which I don't think I should pay for.

Also he doesn't pick me up from home, I have to walk half a mile to the main road for him to pick me up, plus he is completely inflexible about times (I sometimes have to stay 30 mins late at work or so due to the nature of my job -whereas he has the kind of job you can just stop and pick up the next day). He's a real early bird and likes to do 8.00 to 4.00 whereas I'm an owl and prefer to do 9.30 to 5.30, but because it is his car we go at his prefered time. (At 4pm he is already in the car waiting to go home, whereas I don't think you should start packing up till 4pm - not saying I'm right and he is wrong, we are just very different).

It really annoys me because it is so much better for the environment and wallet to share, but the reality is it just doesn't work out! Even offering £10 a week is steep considering the convenience I get for just £4 more. Sorry planet. The train is ridiculously expensive and the station is a 30 minute walk from my house and a 20 minute walk the other end to the office. I don't think there is a bus.

Thanks all for your comments. Will think on about whether it is worth sorting out or if I keep on driving.

Blimey! I'd say he's ripping you off good and proper for that. Cull him and his work-shy ways ?

Car sharing only works if people are happy to work the same hours, otherwise it only leads to resentment. I'd say it's reasonable not to want to change your chosen hours to suit him. Sounds like maybe he's not that keen on the car share either and may be doing it just to subsidise his own rising petrol costs. Take your own car and work when it suits you. [insert environmentally unfriendly icon here]

I agree with Voldemort, cheeky bugger. I suspect you are right, he is thinking how much it costs him in total.

It sounds like more hassle than it is worth to be honest.

If you just drive yourself you save the walk to meet him and to home (which whilst i know it is good for you, i would be thinking of extra minutes in bed!) and you get there and leave when you need to, not dictated by tightwad.

Yes, drive yourself, save yourself the stress and let him foot the whole bill for his meaness and inflexibility ?

It doesn't seem worth the hassle for what you would save. I would take the car.

I work at the same place as my brother, on top of the petrol costs we also have to pay £1.20 each way to get through a tunnel. It would make financial sense to share but he choses to work different hours every day, and is away sharp after his 8 hours, which is no good for me so we don't share.

Hold on a second. the cost of a car (as cariad has already said, and been largely ignored) is not just about petrol. its service costs, tyre wear, oil, depreciation, insurance etc etc. its irrelevant that he is "going anyway" as the person is sharing the car. when you take the bus, train, plane, etc, youre paying for all running costs, not just fuel. at 110 miles a week, the actual cost of motoring is more than 10 pounds, so to ask for more is reasonable in my view. the 40 p per mile revenue allowance is set at that figure for a reason. it takes into account fuel, depreciation etc

the other problems in terms of hours not matching and him not picking up from the door is sperate, and whilst it forms part of the OPs decision, its not really relevant in terms of the cost to her, or what he has asked for. she should pay more than 10 pounds; and on that point, its fine to say "its only £14 for me in petrol anyway", but really, its not is it? its hte aforementioned tres, depreciation, servicing etc etc. what he s actually asked for hasnt been stated (or i ve missed it), only that he wants more than a tenner. i d say 15 quid was entirely reasonable.

Hmm, doesn't sound like the ideal car sharing arrangement. I car share with a colleague, when our shifts co-incide, but he lives 8 miles closer to work than I do, so it wouldn't be fair to ask him to come and pick me up or drop me home. We take it in turns to drive, if it's my turn, I drive and pick him up from his house. If it's his turn to drive then I drive to his house, leave my car on his drive and then he drives from there. That seems fair to me, it's a 70 mile round trip for me so even driving 16 miles to his house and back is substantially less than the whole trip would be doing it by myself.

It doesn't sound like he's the ideal car share buddy for you, with the time differences and you having to walk to meet him but if yo udid want to carry on with it, maybe an arrangement similar to ours might work for you. Maybe not, if he won't drive to your house, it does sound like he's in it to make money rather than share fairly.

Oh good, I was thinking it was me being the tightwad and lazy to boot.

I haven't even mentioned the disagreements about choice of radio / music.

He's into R&B and local radio. I am not.

I'll just have to pray for someone to join our company who lives near me. I've just signed up for carshare.com to see who else makes a similar journey.

Sounds like you two can't make it work. I'm on www.liftshare.com and have had loads of interest but nothing has worked out as I don't do the same journey every day, and most people don't want to commute as far as I do.

H lift shares with 2 other blokes who live in our town and work at his office. One has a car and drives every other week. The other hasn't got a car and pays £25 a week for a 40 mile each way journey to whoever drives. They all seem to get on well though and make it work; H wouldn't do it if he was stuck with some knob.

Sorry to be controversial but my OH used to car share and never once asked for a penny.His reasoning was he was going that way anyway so why not take some one else on the way.

The other person used to buy us a lovely present every christmas to say thanks.

He is also considering doing another carshare,not cost related but parking difficulties and is currently trying to negoiate a payment per week but his workmate doesnt want anything as he goes that way.

Yes i know costs are higher now and thats why oh is wanting to pay something toward the petrol but i dont think car servicing/wear costs should be taken into account as the costs would have to paid for anyway by the driver regardless.