Ali Clabburn was facing a serious dilemma. The year was 1998 and Christmas Day was mere hours away. He was in alone and penniless in Bristol, where he went to university, and his family was in Norfolk, his hometown. Reasoning that there must be a scheme in place for people who wanted to share rides around the country, he rang his local council to find out more, yet to his amazement discovered no such system was in place.
So he decided to create one himself, and Liftshare.com – the UK’s first car-sharing network – was born.
To date, Liftshare, now an international service, has been used by nearly 700,000 people and a whopping 4 million car seats are available in any given week. It is by far the UK’s biggest lift-sharing community and Ali and his team have rolled out similar businesses in Australia and the USA.
Before setting up his company Ali took a gap year, which formed part of the inspiration behind his idea.
Ali says saving money – a topic close to every gapper’s heart – is the main motivator for people who join Liftshare, but that other benefits quickly become apparent.
“Money was definitely the first reason for me – the average saving is £1,000 per year – but I carried on because I met so many amazing people who I still keep in touch with. Plus, I hear brilliant stories from our members about amazing connections they’ve made.
Liftshare is kind on the environment, too: Ali notes that users of the service will save more than 500 million miles over the next 12 months, which would have created 167,000 tonnes of CO2.
Regarding typical Liftshare users, the only thing they all have in common is a desire to save money, meet new people and to travel ethically – other than that they could come from any walk of life, from students to pensioners to backpackers and everything in between.
Ali also speaks about a student from Delhi who has been travelling around Europe using Liftshare, saving enormous amounts of money and scoring a few free beds for the night along the way.
In many ways, Liftshare is a more organised and safer form of hitchhiking. Ali says he hitchhiked when he was travelling 20 years ago and loved it, but that it’s entirely up to the individual and who they’re with.
Liftshare is just one very early example of a wider revolution which has been spreading through the internet in recent times. Widely known as the ‘sharing economy’, these websites aim to take out the middle man and simply allow people to connect and save as much money as possible in doing so.
Websites like Couchsurfing and AirBnB dominate the free accommodation movement, linking up travellers passing through with local people, and websites like Dog Vacay allow dog owners to leave their pets with people who will look after them in their own homes at a fraction of the cost of traditional kennels.
Ali, for now, is quite content with his car-sharing site.
So, if you find yourself stranded this Christmas, unable to get home, remember: unlike Ali, 16 years ago, you have options!