Seven cars that are now somebody's ride to work.
In the first year of our partnership with Vehicles for Change, Liberty Automotive has donated seven vehicles. Each one goes to an apprentice in the building trades who has the job but no reliable way to get to the site.
What Vehicles for Change does
Vehicles for Change is a nonprofit that takes donated cars, repairs them, and puts them in the hands of people who have the job but not the way to get there. It has been doing this since 1999 and has awarded thousands of vehicles. Much of the repair work happens through its training program, which teaches automotive skills to people facing barriers to employment. So a donated car often does two jobs: it teaches someone a trade on the lift, and then it becomes someone else's transportation.
In Illinois, the program runs with Constellation and HIRE360 and is built for union apprentices. A first-year apprentice is referred through HIRE360, and the car gets them to the jobsite. It is the first program of its kind aimed at the trades.
For an apprentice without a car, the math is not subtle. Jobsites move. A missed ride is a missed day, and a missed day early in an apprenticeship can end it.
Why Liberty is the right automotive retailer to ask
Most people who want to help a program like this can write a check. We can do something more specific, because the thing the program actually needs is the thing we have.
- Vehicles come through our doors every week on trade.
- We have lifts, technicians, and parts accounts.
- We know how to title, transfer, and process a car correctly the first time.
A vehicle that has more life left in it than value on a used car lot is exactly the vehicle this program is built around. Sending it to a family instead is not a stretch for us. It is a Tuesday.
We have sold cars from the same corner of Libertyville since 1965. Three generations, same family. A business does not last that long in one town by taking from it. The people who buy from us and bring their cars back to us are the people whose kids go to school with ours, and we owe the place something in return. Giving quietly has been part of how this family operates from the start.
We also have a stake in the trades. Every car we sell needs someone to service it, and a good technician is harder to find every year. The people receiving these cars are first-year apprentices in carpentry, flooring, and the other building trades, and the cars themselves are repaired by people learning ours. That is work we understand, done for people we would hire. Supporting it is not charity to us. It is looking after the kind of work this town runs on.
The first year
Our first donation, made during Thanksgiving week. It was meant as a one-time gesture, and it did not stay one.
Timed to Mother's Day. Four more cars, and the point at which this stopped being a gesture and started being a program.
Seven vehicles in roughly six months, from a single-point store in Libertyville. We are not the biggest dealer group in Illinois and we are not trying to be. We would rather be the one that keeps showing up.
What happens next
We are continuing. The plan is to anchor the donations to the same two points on the calendar every year, Thanksgiving week and Mother's Day, so this becomes something our team schedules rather than something we decide on each time.
If you work with an apprenticeship program or a training partner in Lake County and you want to know how apprentices get referred, or if you are a customer wondering what happens to a trade that has been sitting on the back lot, come ask us. We are on Route 21 in Libertyville and the answer takes about two minutes.