Generally, a carpool is where two or more travelers or commuters get together to share a ride to and from a common destination, with the use of personal vehicles belonging to one of the riders. There are usually two types of carpool arrangements and these are driving and riding only or sharing the driving and the riding.

The driving-and-riding-only arrangement calls for only one person to do the driving, while the other commuters are just in for the ride. Usually, in this kind of arrangement, the driver would be the owner of the vehicle being used. The commuters' responsibilities in this arrangement, whether they're just two or more, would only be to ride and pay their share of the operating costs incurred during the ride.

The sharing the driving and riding arrangement, on the other hand, calls for all the commuters in for the ride to share in the driving responsibility. This is the most common type of carpool arrangement, especially if the length of the commute is quite long. Usually this arrangement is done with one week being the time of one commuter to do the driving using his own vehicle while the others just ride, until such time that it is their turn to do the driving. The next week, another commuter will be designated to take his car for the ride and so on.

So, basically a carpool is just sharing a ride with one or more commuters who are going the same way as you. The perks of this riding arrangement is that you will be able to save on the expenses of the ride that you had to shoulder on your own before you decided to go carpooling.