New Club Cars

We like to lease our golf cars.  They are something that we turn over frequently because, let’s face it, golfers are pretty hard on carts.  I won’t go into details, but let’s just say golfers definitely don’t treat the carts like their own.  Typically, we trade out our carts about every five years.  A variety of circumstances fell into place which led us to getting new golf carts after only three years.  This made me pretty happy because it meant that I could have some upgrades that I was excited to get.

I asked the guys over at NB Golf Cars to take a picture of our cars as they were coming off the truck.  They sent me this fine shot!

Ain’t she a beaut?  The cars are delivered without the tops on them and then the guys over at NB assemble them and get the tops put on the cart.  Check out that Club Car sign.  That’s right.  Our fine cars were made in Augusta, Georgia.  That seems like an appropriate town for golf carts to be made, right?

Because gas costs nearly $4 a gallon, we juggled our old carts off and on over the course of the week to make sure we wouldn’t be giving away thousands of dollars in gas.  The new carts come with barely enough gas to get them off the truck.  The blue carts had treated us well, but it was time to move on to newer and bigger things.

NB showed up with our first load of fleet carts.  It was a cold and rainy day in May.  Wait.  I think the entire month of May was cold and rainy.  Needless to say, we were excited when they started making their deliveries.

I think everyone involved enjoys the thrill of a fresh golf cart.  It’s fun to be the first one to get mud on the tires.  Our main man unstrapped the carts and got to work.

Several golfers have asked why we didn’t upgrade to carts with GPS.  Mostly because it’s simply not within our budget.  We have certainly talked about it, but there are a few factors that we have to overcome first, so it isn’t something that we have completely ruled out.  The main reason is that with the onset of so many mobile apps and devices out there, our golfers already have access to the yardage should it be required.  The second reason is that we aren’t set up for electric carts.  It would require quite a bit of infrastructure that we don’t have at this time.  The final reason is that it would require additional carts in our fleet.  We have a really hilly golf course and cart batteries don’t last the whole five years, especially with hills.  Since we usually turn our entire fleet two times a day, that would simply not be enough time for us to get carts charged and ready for round two.  We’ll definitely re-think our decision when we are done with our lease in the next five years.

We did have a few upgrades that we had in our budget.  First of all, the carts feature our logo on each cart.

We noticed right away that the new model has a more sturdy steering wheel and the front end is up off of the ground a little more than old blue.

The bag straps all come neatly tightened in their place.

While I toured a golf course in Florida, I noticed that they had coolers on their carts.  They used them to keep the golfers cool.  When it got super hot, they gave their golfers a cooler to put on their cart with ice water and a towel.  The golfers could re-ice their towel in several icing stations around the course.  I really liked that idea.  Since Iowa suffers from both too hot and too cold weather, we thought we’d offer this convenience for at least part of the season.  The coolers fit on the carts and will be offered once we hit that hot time of the year.

There you have it.  Our new golf carts.  We are still expecting two family carts.  We’re pretty excited about them as they will seat four golfers and they’re electric.  They’re our little experiment with electric carts.  They haven’t arrived yet, so we’re patiently waiting their arrival.

Have you had any fun on one of our new carts?