Drew’s truck, while running fine, had seen better days. The last time he went to Kandahar, his truck sat untouched in the garage for months. Since I have my own baby truck, I didn’t need another one. We decided not to have a repeat of the “hurry up and wait” experience for the truck this time. And we also decide that there was no point in trading in his old truck to buy a new one before he left. Then we’d just be trading one vehicle stranded in a garage for another.

Enter the government’s “retire your ride” program.

Drew’s truck is old enough that it qualified for him to give the truck to the gov’t in exchange for money ($300) or a year of transit passes.

Parking costs a minor fortune in downtown Edmonton so I’ve been taking public transit to work since I started working for the province. Monthly bus passes cost $85 each month. Getting a year’s worth of bus passes for free saves us a good chunk of change that we can put towards our vacation in February 2011.

The gov’t is trying to get old clunkers off the road and this program was a great way for us to deal with our extra truck problem. It can take a while between registering your vehicle & having it picked up (about 4 weeks in our case) so you’ll need a place to park it while you wait. You’ll get a call for the car to be picked up by a towing contractor and it’s sent off to be crushed. Shortly after pick-up (less than 30 minutes for us) you’ll receive a call to confirm the “reward” option you’ve selected (cash or transit pass) and your mailing address. If you choose transit, a few days later you’ll get a letter in the mail that you take to the city transit office each month to redeem your free pass. The letter is good for one year but must be used consecutively.

If you’ve got a vehicle from 1995 or earlier and don’t know what to do with it, perhaps you should consider throwing a happy retirement party for your vehicle as well.

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