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GarageTime
GarageTime New Reader
11/26/18 7:44 p.m.

In reply to captdownshift :

We have reached out to a number of them, but their legal setup prevents many of them from using the space for anything outside of educational purposes.

Noted on the insurance - we're exploring a number of structures.

 

Brett_Murphy
Brett_Murphy GRM+ Memberand UltimaDork
11/26/18 7:56 p.m.
GarageTime said:

THINGS

Andrew Koretz

Welcome to the Hive, Andrew. I think your idea is great and hope it takes off.

 

dj06482
dj06482 GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
11/26/18 8:30 p.m.

I like the concept, and it definitely fills a need in urban areas. When I lived in apartments, I used to drive home to my parent's place (up to two hours away) to work on my vehicles, so this would have been a big help!

Just to set the context, my garage is attached to my house, and over time has been used (along with my tools) by many people.  I'm happy to show someone how to perform basic maintenance on their vehicles to take better care of them and to save a few bucks when things are tight. I'm usually there with them as they're working to help teach them the skills they'll need to know and guide them through the jobs. My dream is to start a car-related charity to help single mothers and other people struggling to have reliable transportation.

I think nailing down the insurance aspects that GarageTime is already working on will help to gain traction.  How do you screen those applying to rent a space?  Do they go through some kind of background/credit check?  Playing Devil's Advocate: Renting a garage would be a great way to check out the logistics/security of someone's shop/equipment, and then come back at a later date to clean the place out.  I know I'm painting an extreme picture here, but one strategy is to map out all the worst case scenarios and then put controls in place to mitigate them. It sounds like Andrew and the team are already hard at work working out these scenarios.

The prevalence of YouTube has increased people's interest into DIY repair, so I think this comes at a good time. I've loaned out jacks and tools (at no cost) to co-workers, and have worked on several of my co-worker's cars over time.  Some don't have garage space, and most don't have the set of tools necessary to get the job done.  Historically, these have been big barriers to doing automotive work on your own, but I could see GarageTime chipping away at this barrier.  Someone can try out DIY work on the cheap and then see if it's something they enjoy and are good at, or if it's not for them.

In the age of Airbnb, Uber, etc. I think this is a natural progression, and I wish GarageTime the best of luck! I think it could become a great platform to build the community of automotive enthusiasts.

docwyte
docwyte UltraDork
11/27/18 8:40 a.m.

In reply to Ed Higginbotham :

I enjoy working on cars with others and meeting new people too.  I just don't want random people in my garage/house, using my tools and potentially having their hooptie stuck up on my lift because they bit off more than they can chew.  Putting limits in place is all well and good, when it comes down to it are you going to push their car out into the street and force them to call a tow truck?  What if they get belligerent about it?  That's a path that sets up a confrontation, are you comfortable with that with a stranger in your house and your wife and kids home?

This is an interesting idea that has some large pit falls that won't come up until enough users use it that they get uncovered.  How many people carry personal liability insurance that'll cover them in someone elses garage? How can the garage owner even verify that and verify the limits?  Signing a waiver doesn't absolve the garage owner of liability, a mediocre lawyer can easily bypass that in court and make the garage owners life miserable.

How does damage to equipment and facilities get covered?  How about if the renter leaves an enormous mess that takes hours to clean up?  How does my time/clean up supplies get reimbursed?  Does the renter pay out a substantial damage deposit?  What if the renter challenges the damage?  How does that get adjudicated? 

Look, I get it.  We're all enthusiasts and we're all happy to help one another.  I just think there needs to be a lot of thought put into this before you open up your house/garage/tools to basically the general public.  Bad shizz can come of this.  I know I've had issues with loaning tools out to enthusiasts and friends (!!) in my locale, can't imagine having Joe Blow actually using my tools/facilities.

 

Robbie
Robbie UltimaDork
11/27/18 8:50 a.m.

In reply to docwyte :

You are right, but I'm guessing you don't list your house for rent on Airbnb either?

Everyone has a different risk tolerance and risk mitigation plan. That's ok.

docwyte
docwyte UltraDork
11/27/18 10:37 a.m.

In reply to Robbie :

Nope, I don't do Airbnb.  I live in my house with my family, which includes little kids.  I'm not keen on having stranger(s) in my guest bedroom while myself and my family are home.

When I'm not home I don't want strangers in my house, at all!  Call me a philistine, or old school but I'm not sharing my stuff with strangers or knowingly putting strangers in close proximity to my kids inside my house.  I don't look at my house as a rental property, it's where my family lives.  Happy to share it with friends, not with strangers(s).

Also think about dj06482's point of someone coming to your house to scope it out to rob you of all your stuff later.  I didn't even think about that but there are those people out there...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ UberDork
12/5/18 2:39 p.m.

Well, I threw my hat (garage) into the ring.  I'm going to be pretty picky about who can use the place, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to list my garage.  Let's see how this goes!

Ed Higginbotham
Ed Higginbotham UberDork
12/5/18 4:40 p.m.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

That’s awesome. You legitimately live in my dream house/shop. Wish I were closer haha. 

captdownshift
captdownshift GRM+ Memberand PowerDork
12/5/18 5:34 p.m.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Booking for protege lx engine, trans and rear subframe removal.

 

(Not really, but it may come to that in February)

docwyte
docwyte UltraDork
12/6/18 9:30 a.m.

Is $25/hour really the going rate for a big garage with a lift and tools?  Man, that's totally not worth it to invite strangers over to my house....

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ UberDork
12/6/18 9:33 a.m.

In reply to Ed Higginbotham :

Thanks!

wae
wae SuperDork
12/6/18 9:38 a.m.

In reply to docwyte :

That was my thought as well.  I need to find about $1750/year to make the new shop financially neutral and was sorta-kinda thinking about this, but one booking every 10 days on average for the year seems like a long way to get there.  And I don't have a lift yet, either.  I guess if bookings tend to stretch for longer than the minimum commit, that might be something, but I don't think I'd want anyone to have unsupervised access to the place, so that's also my time to sit there in the office while they're there.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ UberDork
12/6/18 9:39 a.m.

In reply to docwyte :

Dude, I get it, I'm an idiot and it's not safe and people are terrible and I'm going to be murdered and all my stuff will get stolen.  But then again, everyone who buys something from me on craigslist comes over too, everyone who walks by can look in the windows, and everyone I'm friends with was at some point a stranger- so I posted my garage and will see what I get, I can always say "no" if somebody gives me a bad feeling when I talk to them.  If that produces any horror stories I'll post here so you can read them.

wae
wae SuperDork
12/6/18 9:43 a.m.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

More importantly, set up a video camera so when you get axe murdered we can watch it on YouTube.

(I'm totally kidding.  YouTube won't permit that type of content...)

docwyte
docwyte UltraDork
12/6/18 11:54 a.m.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

I'm not saying this is gonna end poorly for you.  I obviously have reservations with this idea.  Then on top of it, it's totally not worth my time to do it for $25/hour.  I wouldn't leave someone unsupervised in my garage and my time is worth way more than $25 an hour.

pheller
pheller UltimaDork
1/24/19 4:40 p.m.

I just spoke with Andrew about some improvements for the website, among those getting in a bit more detail about insurance for both wrencher and garage. 

If I had someone locally who was offering their garage, I'd totally take advantage of it (at least if they had a lift.) 

My thoughts were 1) clean up some of the website glitches and 2) add a "Request a Garage" feature that allows users to say "I'm looking for a garage in _____ city, and I'm looking for a lift, tools, and I'd be willing to pay $XX per hour." Maybe add a "Offers Storage" option. 

Ed Higginbotham
Ed Higginbotham UberDork
1/24/19 5:09 p.m.

Oh yeah I really like that second suggestion. Great idea. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ UberDork
2/5/19 7:21 a.m.

Well, so far I've had a number of attempted bookings but no successful ones- everyone wants to book at a moment's notice, I've had several people request use of the garage the night before, or the morning of, the day they want to use it.  I can't quite accommodate that but if you can this could be a good platform for you.

On another note, so far the requests have exclusively been for basic repairs on normal everyday vehicles, which surprised me- I expected more project type stuff.

Antihero
Antihero GRM+ Memberand Dork
2/5/19 9:17 a.m.

Interesting idea, and suprisingly there's one close by to me

Harvey
Harvey GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
7/3/19 2:13 p.m.

I saw this promoted in the mag and I actually thought it was an interesting idea, but you all and your practical ways have discouraged me a bit. The legal liabilities are a bit rough to deal with overall I'd say.

Honestly if I know you then I'm more than willing to let you use my garage to work on your car and in the ideal version of this I'm just making some new friends who want to do some work on their car and they have no house or garage or whatever to do it at.

But then I think about that certain percentage of people that really suck and how that certain percentage rent a house or rent a car and they usually don't give two E36 M3s about whether they berkeley the thing up since it's not theirs and they figure they won't have any consequences to deal with.

gapzop
gapzop New Reader
8/7/21 2:50 a.m.

This certainly seems like it would work in some markets. Roblox Guides get-mobdrovip.com

slantsix
slantsix Reader
12/5/21 7:20 p.m.

I tried searching garages

 

It says that they are no longer providing garages.

 

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