Drivers, riders, and supporters of all things Drover — these are unprecedented times. We have all surely been effected at this point by Coronavirus; people have lost jobs, entire industries have temporarily shut down, our personal lives have been drastically altered by calls for social distancing. This blog is purposed to serve as an update on the status of COVID-19 in the state of Tennessee as well as provide insight into the actions that Drover is taking as a company to enact precautions and best practices to prevent the spread of the virus.
We are proud to announce the arrival of Drover Rideshare to Gatlinburg, TN. Our dream is that that by bringing Drover to Gatlinburg, we will be able to provide the residents and tourists of Gatlinburg with exceptional service as well as create opportunities for people who want to make some extra cash by driving through the app. We’re so excited to get started!
We are proud to announce the grand opening of Drover Hub in Shelbyville, TN — Drover’s first retail store and customer service center open to the public!
This post is the second in my series highlighting the best cars that get over 30 miles per gallon (combined city and highway). Until pure electric technology improves, we can look to traditional cars with internal combustion engines with high fuel efficiency/economy as a temporary solution or at least movement in the right direction.
Until we reach our first year where international emissions are drastically increased by electric cars and sustainable tech, it is wise for consumers and manufacturers to seek compromise -- delivering traditional cars with as high fuel efficiency as possible. Meaning, if for the time being we "have to" use gas-burning cars, let's maximize the distance we are traveling for each gallon of gas.
The On-Demand Economy can be defined as the marketplace created by technology companies that connect people with each other to more immediately position and provide goods and services. In other words, the on-demand economy is composed of people-to-people transactions facilitated by technology companies (aka smartphone apps), in which people order goods or services and other people deliver/provide that good/service. The 'on-demand' portion highlights how quickly this exchange can occur when consumers or those with demand are able to connect directly with suppliers (or agents of supply, eg delivery people who are not actually making food but delivering it).
Upon first reading the title, many of you are probably thinking either 1) What is an ELF? or 2) It's not even Thanksgiving yet, and they are writing about Christmas. Well, my loyal readers, prepare yourselves for a treat... Drover Rideshare is excited to feature Nashville ELF.
As I briefly discussed in a previous blog, the Paris Agreement -- the world's first comprehensive climate agreement -- came into force on November 4, 2016 (about 2 weeks before this article was written). 109 heads of sovereign states agreed to the agreement, including China and the United States. The Atlantic did a phenomenal job of summarizing the implications of the Paris Agreement, and I will first briefly summarize their points in order to contextualize the importance of this moment in history.
52% of pure EVs in America are located in five cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Atlanta (3). On one hand, that is really exciting, because it places these three cities as national leaders in accepting and adopting electric vehicles. On the other, it is a wake-up call to the rest of the nation -- our electric vehicle stock is disproportionately allocated in a few cities while it should be saturated across the country.
Our goal here at Drover, in essence, is to develop an environmentally-friendly rideshare service. To that end, we recognize the importance of the growing pure electric vehicle market around the world. As of December 2015, 1,260,000 pure EVs and plug-in hybrids existed across the world, a number 100 times higher than the world's EV stock (population/amount of EVs in the world) in 2010 (1). Pure electric vehicles are at the core of our current and future business model.
Jeffrey Garland, Founder and CEO of Drover, wouldn't be the same man -- and Drover wouldn't be the same company - without his wife, Dr. Scarlett Garland, DNP. Since Jeff and Scarlett married in November 2015, Scarlett has dutifully supported Jeff's entrepreneurial spirit and initiative in founding Drover. In addition to being Jeff's #! advocate and supporter, she leads an accomplished career as a Doctor of Nurse Practice.
Hey everyone! My name is Neel Patel and I am an iOS Developer at Drover Rideshare. I am from India and moved to United States back in 2009. I lived in New Jersey for about 8 months before moving to Tennessee. I live in Cookeville, Tennessee and went to highschool there. I earned my Bachelors Degree in Computer Science at Tennessee Technological University.
During the last few weeks, we have been meeting with all kinds of people to talk about Drover. The main question (and understandably so) that everyone asks us is: "What makes Drover unique?" So today, we are going to talk about the Drover difference -- everything that makes us special, and then some.
The moment we have all been waiting for is here -- the Drover App has officially launched on the Google Play Store! Check it out on the Play Store here.
After months of time and effort, we are beyond excited to make this announcement. iOS development isn't far behind, but we couldn't wait to launch the android app.
Drover Rideshare officially became a corporation on May 13, 2016. Near that date, CEO Jeff Garland assembled a team of some of the best app developers in Tennessee to start working on Drover's Android and iOS apps. In the past four months, our app dev team have been working tirelessly on bringing Drover to the app market. Today, I am ecstatic to announce that the Android App is 'core complete'.
Here at Drover, we are enthusiastic about the idea of the connected car. Now, when we say the 'connected car', we don't mean Matrix-level connected, like "ahh, the machines!" connected... Instead, we mean getting your car connected to your phone so that you can have an integrated, safe, and fun driving experience.
In my previous post, we walked through a diagram I made to evaluate if you would make a good rideshare rider / if you would enjoy participating in rideshare as a rider. This post will follow a similar format, working through questions to help you decide if working as a rideshare driver is right for you. To illustrate this concept, I have once again attached my poorly drawn whiteboard diagram which I will annotate throughout this post.
When I first thought of this post, I imagined it being mostly funny, however, I realized that this question raises some very valid concerns. In a post-Uber world, and especially in a city like Nashville where ridesharing is very popular, it can be easy to forget that not everyone is on board with the concept. So, if you have ever had any thoughts about whether or not rideshare is right for you, or if you already do engage with ridesharing but want a laugh, you've come to the right place. To illustrate this, I have included a (hopefully) amusing whiteboard drawing.
I think that I am not alone in saying that reading that tweet just leaves you with a feeling of pause. Pause to realize that you just read a piece of history. Pause to realize that, in our lifetimes, we witnessed one of the most significant advancements in automobile technology since the invention of the Ford Model T. Pause to realize that we just read the death sentence of the gas-powered car -- potentially within our lifetimes. Pause to realize that Tesla finally listened to someone and designed a Model S body style that looks different from a Ford Taurus
Drover, as you may know, places a HUGE emphasis on charity, community service, and giving back to the community, as explained on our Drive for Charity page and my Drover Fares Benefit Local Charities blog post. As such, we love sharing the stories of service projects and non-profits that we are involved in. Though Drover doesn't currently have the capacity to do so, perhaps one day we will be able to sponsor our employees to do their own projects in the communities we operate in. Until then, stories of the cool community service projects we do in our own time will have to suffice :).
