Do you want to run the Melbourne Marathon?

That’s what Pete, our Ops Manager, asked the team in early August. At the time it sounded like a brilliant idea. And in retrospect that was still pretty awesome – but boy was that hardcore!

During the marathon my race feeling gradually went from enjoyable to tiring to painful to dying – I’m not sure what kind of terminal-action junkie runs a full marathon but after doing half of one, I say: respect!

In the last kilometres, I had a couple of stitches, some sweat in my ears, and my vision was screwed up to the point where I was seeing round out of one eye and square out of the other.

I must say though, the arrival at the MCG is just magic. For one minute I was Hussain Bolt breaking a new world record, sprinting under the ovation of a crowd in trance.

And I had a free massage. And a free banana.

OK to the Team results now:

1st Our local Zimbabwe runner, my man Justin. He finished 1437th in about 1 hour 40 minutes. Man he’s fit. We don’t like him anymore at Flexicar. See a video and pictures of Justin at the marathon here

2nd Myself in 1 hour 53, 2919th. By the way, I’d like to insist on the fact that my net time was equivalent to the arrival time. Which is impossible as we started the race 3 minutes behind – if you read me St Georges Marathon people, please rectify! So my time is 1 hour 50 minutes. Also note that my dreadlocks are a bit of a handicap, I’d probably have bought a couple of minutes without it. Anyway. See a video and pictures of me at the marathon here

3rd Pete did it in 2 hours and is 4465th. See a video and pictures of Pete at the marathon here

4th Mister Shane, our local nerd and Operations guy, did it in 2 hours and 4 minutes and is 6014th. See a video and pictures of Shane at the marathon here

Ruth did the 10 kms walk – oops sorry Ruth, I meant 10 kms run – not sure of the time though. I couldn’t retrieve her results as she ordered half a dozen race packs and ended running under somebody else’s name.

Now there’s some talks in the office about doing the full marathon next year… Saying that we’ll do it for sure would be presumptuous but stay tuned.

And so much for the marathon.

Greg, half-marathon runner

We’re pleased to introduce you to a new Flexicar staff member, Krystyn. If you call us from Sunday-Tuesday, chances are it’s her you’ll be speaking to on the phone!

Krystyn has only been in Melbourne a couple of years, hailing from “middle of nowhere” Western Australia (that’s a direct quote, in case any other WA people want to yell at me!)

On the days she’s not at Flexicar, Krystyn is a sound engineer in her own business Air Particle Ensemble with her partner. She primarily records live sets for Melbourne bands. She’s obviously into her music and is currently listening to Melbourne artists Sia and Society of Beggars.

So next time you call and get Krystyn, make her feel welcome as part of the Flexi-tribe!

Kimberly the marketing chick

Flexicar was out there on the (wet & cold) Ride to Work Day “Sustainable Transport” event at the Docklands today, organised by Access Melbourne. Luckily some brave souls didn’t let a bit of inclement weather get between them and a lunchtime outing! They’d actually organised a great little event at Victoria Harbour, including a bike wear fashion show, warm soup, prizes, bike engraving by police, updates from Myki and of course, Flexicar!

Here’s a few pictures from the event …

As you may know Flexicar turned four on the 19th of August, and I just wanted to say how awesome it was to have so many calls and birthday wishes – some members even sang “Happy Birthday” on the phone!

Okay we know that you also called to get your half-price birthday booking, you little devils, but hey! That was still much appreciated.

In clear retrospect we might need to appoint a call centre for Flex’ fifth Birthday since we had, by my own count, close to 3,256 calls that morning.

At this occasion I’d also like to thank you, dear Flexicar member, for being…a Flexicar member. Because if we’re still here providing the wonderful service that Flexicar is four years and 70 cars later, it’s thanks to you, beautiful Flexicar members.

So thanks to you all, I leave you with these pictures of the official Flexicar launch four years ago, when Flexicar was named Flo and still a toddler.

Happy Pete, our operations manager (when he was young and fit) with Kermit and Fruity

Former Lord Mayor John So and then Environment Minister John Thwaites on the green route with Monique

Oddly enough Flexicar was then named Flo

John So and John Thwaites test-driving Kermit

Monique's launch speech

The time has come to retire our induction film “re:Flex. The Movie” and produce a new, improved version.

So after lots of script editing and reviewing, we were finally ready to start filming last week with our production company, Conscious Flux. Almost all the team were “volunteered” to star in the 6 minute movie. A large portion was shot “green screen” so that animations can be added afterwards – who knew that Flexicar had something in common with Star Wars!? We were also out and about on many locations, including Grumpy Green’s in Collingwood and near the Studley Park Boat Sheds.

The Melbourne drought of course decided to go into hiding over the two days, so wet and chilly was the order of the day! But we’ve got it all done and we look forward to showing you – and all our new members – the finished product.

In the mean time, here’s a few “behind the scenes” shots!

Presenters Pete & Moniqe talking through the scene

Pete using the vintage phone

Greg ready for his role (taking place in Dan's house - thanks Dan!)

Justin in a scene shot at Grumpy Green's on Smith St

What is it they say about no rest for the wicked?! The Flexicar office will now be open from 9am – 5pm seven days a week (starting this week).

So we’ll be here every day to help with Flexicar bookings and most membership queries (invoicing queries can only be handled Mon-Fri). You can even pop in to say hi or with all of your friends who’ve just been dying to sign up as members!

As the Flexi-Team need a little respite, we will not be able to make phone bookings outside 9am-5pm seven days a week. We will, of course, still be around 24/7 to help members on current bookings with emergencies (like car access, breakdowns, accidents, etc) and we can assist with extensions on current bookings via phone from 7am-10pm seven days a week.

The Flexi-team are rather pumped as we’ve been selected as finalists in the 2009 Melbourne Awards! We applied under the category of “Contribution to Environment – Corporate”. We’ll find out if we’re a winner on Saturday 29 August at the Awards dinner at the Town Hall. Fingers, toes and windshield wipers will be crossed!

(We’re feeling hopeful, perhaps because of Flexicar CEO Monique Conheady’s recent exciting win being selected for a Churchill Fellowship. Congratulations Monique!).

Steve Sammartino iof rentoid.com has written an interesting article on Australian Anthill online, challening entrepreneurs to re-invent something old and make it a new business. He included Flexicar as an example business.

Excerpt:

“The steps we go through as a consumption-based society are:

Extraction > Production > Distribution > Consumption > Disposal.

It’s what I call an infinite mindset on a finite planet. We simply can’t continue to do this if humans want to exist in the future. We desperately need more ‘Re’ businesses.

Re-cycled (Haul, materials in manufacturing)
Re-made (to original condition & sold)
Re-invented (Dues ex machina)
Re-turned (renting businesses Flexicar, rentoid)
Re-novated (houses, cars)
Re-newable (energy anyone?)”

read the full article

Monique our CEO has just headed off to an interview for the 2009 Melbourne Awards. We were finalists last year and are hoping this year we could be winners!

We’re entered under the environmental category. As City of Melbourne drivers make up one quarter of the membership base, we have been able to calculate that the average Flexicar member, through their reduced car usage, represents a reduction of 1,822 tonnes of CO2 p/a output as a direct result of the Flexicar initiative. 

I wanted a quick way for her to communicate this to the judges, as tonnes can be hard to picture. We ended up thinking in terms of the “black balloons” featured in sustainability Victoria’s campaign (shown below). As each black balloon holds 50gms of CO2, this means having Flexicar in the City of Melbourne has saved the equivalent of over THIRTY-SIX MILLION black balloons!!!! Flexicar members, pat yourselves on the back!

Thanks to everyone who took the time to complete the Flexicar survey we sent out recently. Around a quarter of our members completed it, which is fantastic, as it ensures we get a great cross section of experiences and comments.

So what did everyone have to say?

Well, you’re a social bunch, with most people using Flexicar to visit family and friends. And then you like to shop, with the next most popular category being using a Flexicar for a big shopping trip. Then there were some uses we hadn’t thought of, like: getting toys back to toy library, rehearsals for a band, setting up an exhibition and even getting to the waste transport station (formerly known as “the tip”!).

We also learned just over half of you don’t have a car, but that 10% have sold a car since joining Flexicar and another 20% have avoided buying  car. And we had some good suggestions on car’s you’d like to see in the fleet, although we appreciated that the person who wanted to add the Audi T was just kidding. Lot’s of enthusiasm for the Hybrids, so we hope you all get a chance to drive one this year.

You also shared TONNES of suggestions, topping out at around 200 ideas. Here’s just a few (and answers from us for some of them).

Put more cars in the CBD

We are working on this at the moment and we have several spots we’ve requested being evaluated by our friends at the City of Melbourne to allocate these. Needless to say, it’s a high demand parking area.

Please dont paint any more cars bright yellow

Now whilst we’d love to take the credit, Honda delivers them that way! Seriously, though, we get even MORE people asking for more visible cars, so this is a tricky one. But you will notice there’s a few more white, black and silver cars appearing later this year.

Love Flexicar but your booking site needs an overhaul to make it more user-friendly

Yes, we definately hear you on this one. The Flexicar back end is actually much more complicated than you might imagine. We’ve been working on a “new and improved” version for over a year – and it will probably be another year before a complete overhaul will be complete as we are trying to keep costs down, thus ensuring your rates don’t go up. But we are making incremental improvements all the time, so please bear with us!

Great customer service during the day but sometimes people overnight seem a bit grumpy

We’d like you always to get a happy person at the other end of the phone. But what you may not know is that the people manning the phone overnight are the same ones that man them during the day. We do this as we don’t get a lot of calls and so it allows us to keep our costs – and your rates – down. So that’s why we ask that you don’t call between 11pm and 7am unless it’s an emergency, as you’ll actually be waking someone up.

We’d also like to thank you for all the encouraging comments we received. Here’s one lovely one we wanted to share (and it wasn’t even written by anyone’s mum!):

“I am consistently impressed with Flexicar – the professionalism, business model and responsiveness. I have recommended you to many people and would love to see this model become even more widely used. It benefits the environment, counters the need for unnecessary consumerism and, I think, helps social connectivity. Keep up the good work all.”