First off I apologize to Dave Givnish for continuing to hijack his thread... but it's too good a topic to turn down. Carl Johnson and Lou Duran make excellent points. Everyone does! I will try to clear up some of the questions. It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma, but let’s get down to the facts.
1. Carts are a “must” at all but the most exclusive clubs and resorts. We would not exist without them. We would have to charge very high monthly dues (for the loss of 50% of our membership) and eliminate our old and/or infirm members from playing golf.
2. Because of #1, a “cart barn” is a necessity, so I eliminate the amortization and maintenance of that building in my calculations.
3. I do not take “wear and tear” of the course into consideration. With proper routing and member education, the cart traffic is not a problem. Note that we have indestuctible bermudagrass fairways. I know for a fact that fescue cannot take traffic. I am sure bentgrass suffers from greater cart impact as well.
4. A much bigger problem are the divots. Again this is a bermudagrass issue and might differ with bent and fescue. We fill our divots with sand. We don’t replace them. I don’t think it’s fair to ask a walker to lug a sand bottle when carrying his bag. We like push carts because most come with a sand bottle attachment. So I take “wear and tear” on the course out of the equation.
5. We lease our fleet and with our current usage, 90% of our carts we turn in are still in excellent condition. I don’t think the marginal usage increase from not charging a cart fee would make a material difference in maintenance costs.
Here is what we pay every year for our cart fleet of 72 state of the art Club Cars with rain covers, coolers and sand bottles:
Lease cost: 4 year operating lease with a 4 year battery warranty. $56,000 per year
Maintenance contract: $5,000 per year (batteries, cables, etc….)
Cart / bag attendants (estimate 1 per day marginal cart vs no cart): add $25,000 per year
Pro shop attendants (deduct 1 per day marginal cart vs no cart): subtract $25,000 per year
Electricity: 42,000 per year for my entire facility (clubhouse, cart barn, maintenance, pumphouse, fans). To be conservative, let’s assume $10,000 of that is to charge carts.
The total annual expense for a 72 cart fleet is $71,000 at the most. We have 500 members, an average age of 45, are open all year round, and do about 18,000 rounds per year. 10,000 of those rounds are riding.
If our annual cart revenue was $400,000, this conversation wouldn’t be worth having. Since it’s only $150,000 and I don't think $25 a month is going to cause anyone to resign from a club they paid $22,000 to join, it’s something I dwell over every year I write the budget.
Eliminate the revenue issues surrounding cart policies and usage!
Then we can all go out and just play golf!