With a toddler gnawing on an apple chunk hanging over my hip, I ran after my speedy tween to meet a woman named Sally Brien who was driving her to school. The San Francisco mom of four recently started working for Shuddle, a new Uber-style service for kids, and we were trying out the service for the first time.
Even though I’d never met Sally before I knew a lot about her.
Shortly after I scheduled my daughter’s morning ride with the easy-to-use Shuddle app, I received a text message indicating the ride was confirmed and directing me to the app for details on the driver. I found a photo of a warm, friendly-faced woman who looked like someone you’d want teaching your child’s second grade class. Her bio let me know that she works for a nonprofit and coaches high school tennis.
Sally got out of her car to help my daughter into the backseat of her spotless pale green Toyota Sienna minivan. I shook Sally’s hand, gave my daughter a hug — and they were off.
Fifteen minutes later I received a text alerting me that my daughter had arrived to school safely.
Shuddle is the brainchild of Nick Allen, who got his start in the ride-sharing business when he founded Sidecar, a company connecting car owners to passengers heading in the same direction. Allen noticed that parents were occasionally using Sidecar to shuttle their kids around the city, and then a light bulb appeared over his head in September 2013 when The New York Times published an article on the busy Manhattan parents who were depending on Uber to cart their kids from school to after-school tutoring, dance classes, soccer practice, and the myriad activities today’s kids juggle.
“Parents were using these services but to have a child riding alone in an Uber is against the company’s terms and conditions,” Allen told SFGate. “It’s confusing for drivers. They don’t have the right insurance. It’s not designed for that.”
“I thought, let’s go out and create the right service that’s designed for families and safe for kids.”
Allen did just that.
Shuddle was in beta all fall and officially launched in San Francisco, the East Bay and the Peninsula in October. Marin service will arrive in a couple weeks. Allen and his team are plotting where to launch next. “Our goal is to be a nationally recognized company that families can count on,” he shared with SFGate.
The slick Shuddle app allows parents to schedule rides up to a week in advance and no less than 24 hours before the pick-up time. This time frame doesn’t allow parents to summon a driver at the last-minute, and Allen says the company isn’t set up like a taxi cab-style service because he wants parents and children to have time to look at the driver’s profile and make arrangements with the school. Parents can schedule any child who can legally ride without a booster seat (generally age 8 and above).
Shuddle requires that all passengers have a phone and for some parents who aren’t ready to let their 8- or 9-year-old loose with a cell phone this is a downside because it disqualifies them from using the service.
“‘I’m really excited about this new service but I’m not ready to hand over a cell phone to my 9-year-old,” says San Francisco mom Elizabeth Leu. “It is the one thing that deters me, but I understand its importance to be able to track her.”
Allen says the phone requirement is crucial to ensure a safe experience.
Another safety precaution: Parents choose a password that the driver must repeat to the child at pick up to verify that she’s a Shuddle driver.
The cost of the ride is charged to the parent’s credit card so you don’t have to send your kids to school with a stash of cash and Shuddle is currently running a promotion where any ride costs $10. In a few weeks when the regular fares kick in, the service will cost about 20 percent more than UberX.
“Our drivers are taking on more responsibility,” Allen explains. “They often have to check a child in or out of school. We’re not trying to be the cheapest option. We want to be the safest option.”
The heart of the company is the team of 100-plus drivers. All of them are female (this isn’t a requirement), and all have experience with kids (this is a requirement). These women are nurses, teachers, nannies and coaches who enjoy children and want to make a little money on the side, or maybe they’re just looking for something to do.
“A lot of our drivers are empty nesters,” Allen says. “Their children have gone off to college. They want to stay involved with kids and give back to other families.”
My daughter tested the service a second time after school and her driver Erica Culp-Garcia is a mom of one who studied child development in college. When Culp-Garcia dropped my daughter home after school, she had fun, upbeat music playing in the car. She uses an app called Songs to make sure the tunes are kid-approrpriate.
Culp-Garcia also works for Lyft, “but I wish I could work for Shuddle full-time,” she told me. “I love kids. Shuddle offers a great break from driving drunk people around from bar to bar.”
Allen understands that safety is the top priority for parents and all Shuddle drivers have undergone criminal background and DMV records checks, provided two employee references, passed an in-person interview, and undergone training that urges them to be friendly with passengers yet respect children’s boundaries. Drivers use their own vehicles and these must be newer than 10 years, have four doors, and pass a 19-point inspection.
What’s more, Shuddle pays for special insurance that allows their drivers to transport kids and this means the insurance agency is regularly conducting inspections of the company’s safety procedures.
While their kids get carted around town, parents can track their driver’s movement. Text messages provide alerts of when kids have been picked up and delivered, and concerned parents can pick up the phone at any time and expect to speak with a live person.
“Unlike other services where you couldn’t get someone on the phone, we’re not just an app,” Allen told SFGate. “We want to offer peace of mind where you can reach someone any time you need to.”
In additiona to managing the phone line, employees at the S.F.-based Shuddle headquarters are also tracking each and every ride. When President Obama was in town and a driver and a child got stuck in traffic that came to a dead stop, the driver and Shuddle HQ worked to alert the parents and keep them updated on their child’s arrival time.
San Francisco mom Rana DiOrio, who wrote a book titled What Does It mean to Be Safe? to help kids learn how to protect themselves, uses Shuddle for her three children with confidence.
“I love the fact that these drivers are all people who know how to interact with children,” DiOrio says. “They have to go through training and their cars must meet safety specifications. They require that your child has a phone and their drivers use a password.”
DiOrio says before she started using Shuddle, she was putting her two oldest kids in Ubers to get across town to school, as she has to drive her youngest to school in Marin. She faced the situation that challenges many parents: You simply can’t be in two places at once.
“My oldest is a bit of a worrier and she was concerned about taking Uber,” DiOrio told SFGate, “but she feels safe taking Shuddle. She loves the password thing and it makes her comfortable and confident.”
DiOrio is now using Shuddle twice a week and sometimes for after-school on early dismissal days. “It really has changed my life,” she says.
Arriving to school in a hired car might sound like a luxury for the rich and famous. Brad and Angelina’s kids and Suri Cruise probably roll up to their schools in sparkling cars driven by chauffeurz. But when you consider what it costs to hire a nanny to drive your kids before and after school, a service like Shuddle is a bargain. Most childcare workers don’t want a 30-minute job. They typically have a two-hour minimum. At $25 an hour for a reliable nanny who you can trust behind the wheel, you’re talking $50. Even without the $10 promotion, the 15-minute ride from my house to my daughter’s school would cost about $10.
I can’t afford to use the service every day nor do I want to because I enjoy taking my daughter to school and she also has fun taking Muni with friends several days a week, but on that day when she has to get to school early and I also have a 7:30 a.m. conference call and my husband left the house at 5 a.m. to be in the field, you know who I’m calling — Shuddle. And actually, those sorts of days come up more often than not.
Article and Photos Sourced From: http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2014/11/07/uber-style-service-for-kids-launches-in-san-francisco/
