The business model – at least to the casual observer – seems airtight. In a bid to prevent drunk driving, a company hangs out its shingle in a moderately dense population center and offers rides to tipplers who are in no condition to get behind the wheel. The twist? You get to go home in your own car – the driver will come to your rescue on a specially designed scooter, which can be folded up and neatly stored in your trunk.
That’s the short version, anyway – and it usually works as advertised. But drunks being drunks, good judgment is not always paramount.
“We recently had one [customer] who called us for a ride; the driver got there and immediately called … to make sure [they were] ready to go,” said Justin Sisley, co-owner of ScooterCabs, a Madison-based driver service that’s been ferrying drinkers home in their own cars since last November. “So the driver arrives, calls the customer back, and the customer says, ‘Oh, I don’t need it anymore, I found a ride.’
“So we said, okay, that’s fine. We got a call from the same customer about a half-hour later saying, ‘Now I do need a ride.’ So we go back to the parking garage, where this person had gotten a friend who said they were sober enough to drive the vehicle, but didn’t even make it out of the parking garage before crashing it into a pole. So I guess lesson learned there. Next time you call, don’t cancel.”
Of course, Sisley and his business partner, Paul Gilbertson, have a vested interest in attracting – and retaining – as many hooched-up clients as they can. But their mission also involves keeping drunks who can’t successfully navigate parking garages off public roads, and removing what Sisley sees as the last true obstacle to responsible post-party decision-making.
“People know they can take a cab, they know they can maybe find a ride with a friend, but they don’t do it because they want their car home,” said Sisley. “Well, now they don’t have an excuse for that either, so I think it’s something that will really prevent drunk driving in a state that has the most drunk driving in the country.”
Blotto Badgers
Of course, Sisley is right about Wisconsin’s unenviable ranking when it comes to drinking and driving. The baleful effects of Wisconsin’s celebrated – and frequently winked at – drinking culture go beyond the occasional weekend hangover. At the most extreme end, Wisconsin’s party-hardy ethos is nothing short of deadly. In fact, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Wisconsin has the highest rate of drunk driving in the nation.
At the same time – more than in most states perhaps – Wisconsin’s culture reflects the yin and yang of beverage alcohol. Inside that devil’s brew, after all, is a good dose of gemutlichkeit, and there are plenty of well-intentioned, happy-go-lucky partiers who just want to get home without hurting anyone.
So when Sisley, a former UW student, saw a similar business featured on the TV series Top Gear, a light bulb went off.
“I got the idea from watching that a couple of years back, actually when I was still in school, and thought it was a great idea at the time,” said Sisley. “I didn’t have the money, so it kind of went on the back burner until last year, when my time freed up and I had a little extra money to invest in it and decided it would be good for Madison.”
A promising start
So far, things are going well for the business. There would appear to be no shortage of potential clients, but getting the word out for any start up can be a challenge. The company has partnered with bars and has sponsored events (so far no word from MADD), and has managed to eke out a small profit.
Getting people familiar – and thus comfortable – with the service can also be an uphill battle, said Sisley.
One of the questions Sisley gets asked most frequently is whether the service operates in winter (it does, and if conditions get too bad, a car is used in lieu of a scooter).
The other frequently asked question is a bit more comical, however. While the business’s actual M.O. makes perfect sense, the way some people envision it working – drunks doubling up with drivers on small scooters – would likely make for one of the worst business models in history. (The business’s website actually greets visitors with the message “To Answer Your First Question, No, You Won’t Be Riding on a Scooter!”)
“Yeah, we come to you on the scooter, we put it in the trunk, we drive you home in your car, and then we pop the scooter out and head back to wherever we need to go,” said Sisley. “People always think they’re on the scooter. They’re never on the scooter. It’s just for us. They don’t need to worry about falling off the back of a tiny scooter.”
The other big issue is cost. Getting a ride home is always a good idea, but if it costs more than the customer is willing to pay, discretion often falls by the wayside. According to Sisley, the company anticipated that objection as well.
“We very specifically structured the rates so that it was always going to be cheaper than two cab rides,” said Sisley. “So basically we took Union Cab or Badger Cab or whatever and looked at how much it would cost if you were going, say, five miles. So we figured going home five miles in a cab and coming back five miles in a cab the next day to get your car, we took that and we put our rates below that. So we’ll always be cheaper than those two cab rides.”
Beyond Mad City
Of course, late-night boozers are not renowned for their genteel behavior, so one has to at least question the wisdom of starting a business that puts you in direct contact with that sometimes unruly crowd.
So far, however, ScooterCabs has seen only the Jekyll side of the common drinker.
“We’ve actually had zero trouble with that,” said Sisley. “I think there’s a combination of factors that have made it all right for us. One is that calling us in the first place means that they’re in the state of mind where they’re smart enough to make that decision. And two, they’re in their own cars, so that kind of deters people from doing anything stupid in their own vehicle. …
“I mean, as far as behavior goes, everybody seems to be pretty happy. I think most people really are just so excited about the concept that they can get their car home and it’s new to them a lot of times, so they’re just happy that they can get this service.”
While Sisley says ScooterCabs is just getting off the ground in Madison – the company started too late to take advantage of the last Badger football season, which could present a welcome challenge this year – down the road, more Wisconsin towns famous for their bibulous ways could be targets for expansion.
“Yeah, that’s absolutely the next step is to try to get it out there,” said Sisley. “We’ve had a lot of people recommend La Crosse just because they have kind of the that same [atmosphere]. Madison works great because there’s a lot of bars concentrated downtown, and it draws a lot of people downtown to one central location, and obviously they have to drive them. La Crosse is kind of like that, too, where they have one street where all the bars are located and a lot of people drive there.
“Milwaukee’s another one, which will probably be the first one we look at just because I’ve lived in Milwaukee so I’m familiar with it.”
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