School runs · Activities · Charters

Safe, reliable school rides from your street.

State-certified drivers, and vans inspected every morning, monthly, and by the CHP.

Book once and the school year is done. We run the school’s own calendar — early starts, minimum days, all of it.

See coverage & rates

A child with a backpack climbing into a ZiiP van

Every school day

To & from school

A seat reserved for the whole school year. Morning, afternoon, or both.

How it works

Weekdays and weekends

Activities & camps

Soccer practice, tutoring, weekend sports, beach camps. The standing trips that eat an afternoon.

How it works

Any day, any trip

Charter the van

All fourteen seats for a birthday, a game day, or a one-off run to camp.

See charters

Every driver, every van

Safety

Before anything else, because everything below is worth nothing without it.

Permits

A California PAB permit, the CPUC authority for carrying schoolchildren in a prearranged van, and a TCP-A charter licence — licensed and insured under CPUC rules for carrying passengers.

SPAB certified drivers

Not a licence you apply for. Written exams, behind-the-wheel testing with a state instructor, a DMV medical exam, DOJ and FBI fingerprinting, clearance through the state's Guardian system against California's child abuse index, and refresher training every year to keep it. Every ZiiP driver holds one, founders included.

Vehicle inspections

Every morning before the first pickup, brakes, tires, lights and electronics are checked. A mechanic inspects every van monthly, as the law requires. The CHP inspects them twice a year on top of that.

Private

The only name we hold for your child is the one you chose. The driver's list says that nickname. No cameras in the van, and nothing that follows your child around — our app shows where the van is, and only to the families riding it.

A ZiiP van waiting outside a Manhattan Beach school

What your child gets into

A van, not a car

Fourteen seats, a marked vehicle, and a group of kids from your own neighborhood in the back. Adults can't book a school run, so it's your child, the kids they see daily, and the driver — nobody else.

A seat belt at every seat, and a driver who holds a state certificate for carrying schoolchildren.

At the door, the driver and your child confirm a nickname you chose. Nothing to unlock, nothing to show, nothing a stranger could guess.

Weekday mornings and afternoons

Convenience

Sort the school year once, in about five minutes.

We come to your street

We provide private, prearranged pick-ups and drop-offs for families in neighborhoods a traditional school bus route doesn't reach. Not a bus line, not a taxi — a shuttle you book for the year.

A ZiiP van dropping off on a residential street

Step 1
Find your ZiiP Spot
Close to home, not exactly at your door. On our app, enter your address or drop a pin on the map, and we'll show you your two nearest ZiiP Spots — usually a minute or two's walk, chosen so the route stays quick for every family on it.
Step 2
Set your week
Reserve the seat for the whole school year and book every ride in one sitting. Then say where your child goes each afternoon — home, grandma's, a friend's house — and vary it by weekday if that's how your week runs.
Step 3
Then forget about it
Our schedule follows the school's. The middle school and high school run an early start and a regular start, with early and regular dismissal — we run all of them, and minimum days are already handled. You don't have to tell us.
Need to change one Thursday for a birthday party? Change that one Thursday.

Round trip

Both ends of the day.

Afternoon only

You drop off on your way to work. We handle the three o'clock, which is the one nobody can get out of the office for.

Morning only

For whoever's week runs the other way round.

Shorter terms are available too. See zones, schedules and rates for what's on offer.

Billed monthly, not up front. A year-long seat does not mean a year-long check.

Cancel any time. Rides continue to the end of the month you have paid for. Everything after that is cancelled, and you are not billed for it.

The morning it goes wrong

Reliability

What happens on the morning it goes wrong.

Your child isn't at the ZiiP Spot

We mark it and text you immediately. You hear it from us, in the moment — not at the end of the day.

The van is running late

You get a text before you're standing outside wondering whether to give it five more minutes.

A driver is out sick

Another certified driver takes the route. We don't cancel runs.

ZiiP ran school routes here from September 2018 until Covid closed the schools in March 2020. Across that year and a half we did not miss a single scheduled run. And if we ever do miss a pickup, that week's rides are on us.

Anytime

Charter a van

Fourteen seats, one driver, door to door — built with a van full of kids in mind. No parking, no convoy of cars, nobody drawing straws over who drives home. (Grown-ups welcome too, parents — we won't check ID.)

Birthdays and outings

Paintball, the pier, Disneyland. Get the whole party there together and back again.

Game day

Rams, Dodgers, Lakers. Everyone arrives together and nobody is the designated driver.

Hollywood Bowl

The one venue in Los Angeles where the parking is worse than the traffic.

Private events

Weddings, reunions, company days out — anywhere a group needs to move as one.

Since 2018

We built this for our own kids first

We started ZiiP in 2018 and drove the first routes ourselves, before asking anyone else to put a child in one of our vans. School routes ran from September 2018 until Covid closed the schools in March 2020.

Our own three were in Manhattan Beach schools and rode in these vans every day, alongside their classmates, for that whole year and a half.

Then life got in the way for a few years. Late last year, friends and family talked us into starting it again — mostly the ones still doing two school runs a day.

That's why the safety section up there is written the way it is. We weren't designing this for other people's children in the abstract.