ScooterCrew gets you, your car home

You’re having a great time at the company’s holiday party, or maybe at a wedding reception, or during a New Year’s Eve celebration. All that fun has left you a bit too wobbly to drive home, but you don’t want to leave your car parked on the street somewhere.

Who you gonna call?

Jeff Seabaugh, Prairie Village, wants you to call ScooterCrew, a service that provides a designated driver to take you and your car safely home. The driver arrives on a collapsible scooter, stashes the scooter in the trunk, drives you and your car home, then rides away on the scooter.

Seabaugh, 54, left a job in the corporate world and began the designated driver service last September in the Plaza and Westport areas. He has four drivers and seven 50cc fold-up scooters. The services costs $10 plus $3 a mile.

“We are now working 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturdays,” Seabaugh said. “Initially our thinking was to be in the Plaza and not be something for everybody, but there wasn’t enough business on the Plaza to support us.

“We discovered on Wednesday night, there’s one bar up in Westport that had more people than all of the Plaza so it made more sense to be up there. On Thursdays, it seems like they are giving away free beer over in Brookside.

“We’ve gotten calls from the Power and Light District. We can cover Westport, the Plaza, Brookside, Waldo and the Power and Light.”

People can call ScooterCrew at (816) 994-2623 or go to www.scootercrewusa.com for more information.

The drivers go through background checks, are trained and wear uniforms.

“Ironically, the guys working for me are all motorcycle riders and they take a job like this because it’s fun for them,” Seabaugh said. “I’m real happy with the guys; I interviewed about 45 guys to hire four.

“They are clean cut, don’t have holes poked into their heads or tattoos, and they’re all insured. My mom would hand them her keys; they’re Boy Scout type of guys.”

Seabaugh said this type of service has been in London for more than 10 years.

“One of my silent partners is a Brit and drunk driving over there is a stigma that’s so negative that people just won’t (drink and drive),” Seabaugh said. “But here, it’s really been a surprise to me how few people have chosen to use the service; I’m really shocked how many people will get in a car drunk as a skunk and drive.

“They walk right past my guys and walk right by cabs. It surprises me.”

The people who have used ScooterCrew have given positive feedback.

“They love it,” Seabaugh said. “You get up the next morning with a headache and with your car; you ride home with your own music in your own car.”

The first few months of operation, Seabaugh has been trying to educate people about the service.

“It’s a real paradigm shift,” he said. “You can’t reason with a drunk. You have to educate people when they’re going in instead of coming out. It’s a dandy service; people who have used it rant and rave and love it.

“I just need people seeing us as the right thing to do and then people need to start doing the right thing.”

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