Pre-Season Fleet Readiness Checklist

Work through this before your first rental of the season. It is roughly a day for a twenty-cart fleet, and it is the difference between a March that runs and a March that you spend on the phone.

Nothing here is a maintenance schedule. Your carts came with one from the manufacturer, and that document governs. This is the operator's list: what to check, what to write down, and what to decide before renters arrive.

Per cart

Do these one cart at a time and finish each before moving to the next.

• Batteries. Charge to full and confirm they hold it overnight. Note any cart that does not.
• Charger and cable. Working, undamaged, and stored with the cart or labeled to it.
• Tires. Pressure to spec, tread checked, sidewalls checked for cracking. Carts sitting through the off-season lose pressure and develop flat spots.
• Brakes. Test them. Anything that feels wrong comes off the rental list until it is fixed.
• Lights. Headlights, tail lights, brake lights, turn signals if fitted.
• Horn.
• Seat belts where fitted: latch, retract, webbing intact.
• Mirrors and windshield where fitted.
• Seats and floor. Tears, mildew, anything that grew over the summer.
• Steering. Play, pull, noise.
• Clean it, including under the seats.

Recorded, not just checked

• VIN written down and stored against that cart
• Plate and registration current, where the cart is registered
• Serial or fleet number matching whatever you call it on your booking system
• Photos taken this season, current condition, for the booking page and for your records
• Existing damage logged before the first rental: location on the vehicle in plain language, severity, and marked as pre-existing

That last one is the whole point of doing this now. Every scratch you log today is a scratch nobody argues with you about in March. Every one you skip becomes somebody's word against yours.

Paperwork

• Rental agreement text reviewed for this season. Read it as though you had never seen it. Anything that surprised you last year gets fixed now.
• Minimum driver age confirmed in the agreement, in your booking system, and in what your staff tell people. All three should match.
• Cancellation and weather terms decided before the first storm, not during it.
• Late return terms: grace period and the rate after it, both written down as numbers.
• Insurance renewal date in your calendar, with a warning 45 days out.
• Business license and any local registration current.
• Sales tax and any state or local surcharge rate confirmed for this year.
• Last season's signed agreements stored somewhere you can find one in under five minutes.

Bookings and rates

• Daily rate set for each cart or class of cart
• Weekly discount decided: the percentage and how many days qualify
• Minimum and maximum rental length
• Rest days between rentals set on the calendar, so a cart cannot be booked out before it is cleaned and charged. Decide the number and enforce it in the system rather than in your head.
• Delivery zones and fees, or pickup location and hours
• Blackout dates: holidays you close, events you avoid, weeks the fleet is committed elsewhere
• Add-ons priced, with stock counted. Coolers, car seats, chargers, whatever you rent alongside.
• Free cancellation window decided and set
• Booking page tested on a phone, all the way through payment
• Confirmation and reminder messages reviewed, with this year's dates and phone number in them

Staff and access

• Who can do what, written down. Who takes bookings, who handles refunds, who can change a rate.
• Accounts created for anyone new, with the access level they need and nothing more
• Accounts removed for anyone who left last season. This gets forgotten every year.
• Who gets the booking notifications, which is a separate question from who has access. The person who should be woken up by a 9pm booking may not be the person with the widest permissions.
• Handover walk-around trained, so every staff member does the same photos and the same conversation
• One phone number that renters actually reach, and a plan for who answers it after hours

The pre-season damage baseline

Worth its own section because it is the item most often skipped.

Before the first rental, photograph and log every cart as it stands: eight angles, plus a wide and a close-up of anything already wrong. Mark all of it pre-existing, attached to no rental.

From that moment, anything new has a date and a rental attached to it by default. Without the baseline, every dispute starts with you trying to remember what the cart looked like in February.

An hour for a twenty-cart fleet, and it settles arguments for the rest of the year.

The week before you open

• Every cart charged and staged
• Booking page live and tested by somebody who does not work for you
• Google Business Profile hours updated for the season
• Off-season message removed from your website, voicemail and social profiles
• First week's bookings reviewed and carts assigned
• Repeat renters from last season contacted, if you promised them first refusal

Not legal, safety, tax or insurance advice. Follow your manufacturer's maintenance guidance for anything mechanical and your own state and local rules for registration and operation. We rent carts at Welaka Golf Carts in Putnam County, Florida, and built Greenlit to run it.