On the Road Lending

If selected for this award, I will use it to amplify our unique alternative lending, credit-building program.  Having access to quality transportation is fundamental to families and individuals being able to live their best lives. 

We believe in people and do not look at credit scores. We provide a no judgement zone and a second chance opportunity for families and individuals to purchase an affordable reliable vehicle with financial coaching. We also provide vehicle selection services.

With this award, it will enable us to expand beyond the current four states where we provide our program. It will allow us to aid other working families thrive in a post-pandemic world. 

I am the Car Lady. I love cars.

I’m proud that our clients call me “the car lady.” I have come to know a lot of people from different paths since 2013—clients who had been in prison, women who had been prostitutes or battered, veterans struggling with PTSD and drug addiction, and single mothers who gave birth as teenagers. All of these individuals—truly all of us in this world—want freedom. They want to control their time. They want to make their own decisions. They want to build a strong future. Having a car puts them on that road—the road to a better life.

My goal for the future is continue building a prosperity movement through a vehicle, which creates the freedom of mobility and inclusion.

Predatory lending is billion business that preys upon undeserved and vulnerable populations that do not feel like they have an alternative. This is a significant problem that cripples families' ability to thrive.

On the Road Lending provides affordable loans for reliable cars to help working families and individuals overcome transportation barriers so they can find and retain employment, live healthier lives, and avoid predatory lenders. Our clients have limited financial knowledge, poor credit, and lack of assets. We provide relationship-lending, financial education, vehicle selection assistance as an alternative to subprime lending. Reliable transportation puts our clients on the road to economic mobility. 

Credit has existed for 5,000 years. Long before we had money, agrarian societies extended credit to each other so that people could satisfy their needs. Contrary to belief, these agreements were not usually built on bartering, just awareness. It has only been in the past 70 years (since the Diner’s Club Card was created in the 1950s) that trust in people has been measured by formulas, not understanding. 

Decisions based on FICO use inductive reasoning – there is no time for further inquiry, so we assume that the past predicts the future by relying solely on credit scores. But credit is a lagging indicator – it can be months old. Less than 20% of subprime lenders even verify income and we know how that ends. (Remember the subprime mortgage crisis?) Decisions based on character use real time information – we have read-only access to a
client’s bank account so we can see what is happening now and we can confirm their financial picture (which we review 100% of the time). And by taking the time to understand not only what happened in the past, but what the client is hoping for in the future, we understand more.

Our car loans are transformational. We utilize Salesforce to track our clients and their performance. We have aligned our outcomes with the U.N. Sustainability Goals.

Fundamentally, we are effective because we take the time to get to know our clients, their passions, their past missteps and provide a vehicle for them to reimagine possibilities.