What goes into the cost of a driving lesson?

Driving lessons are expensive!! More expensive than riding lessons, and most trainers do not keep lesson horses for students to use in driving lessons, so if you don't have your own horses and carriages you're SOL on getting a driving lesson.

Why?

Why are driving lessons so expensive?

Despite what you might think, its not greed and we're not getting rich off teaching driving lessons. In fact, most of us out there teaching driving lessons are not even covering our costs to provide lessons. We are out there shedding blood, sweat and tears, because we want to help everyone experience driving and help as many people to be safe in the driving world as we can!

Lets breakdown the costs of what you, the consumer, will be getting for your buck:

-Borrowed Equipment

Horses: Driving horses aren't cheap. I allow people to come and use my show horses and the horses that do commercial carriage rides for lessons. These horses range from $15,000-$30,000 (conservatively)

Harness: Each driving harness runs about $1,500-$2,000... Keep in mind when pieces get worn out or broken, I've got to spend the $ to replace and fix it!

Carriages: A carriage to teach a driving lesson in will set an instructor back $6,000 easily

Yearly maintenance on a lesson horse: $15,000 (this is a super cheap conservative number). There is also maintenance and upkeep to the carriages.

Property: Driving requires space, property maintenance (that beautiful HUGE driving arena doesn't just grow grass on it's own with carriage wheels rolling over it...), expensive cones (those cones in my field you hit and drive over constantly while learning to steer? $50 EACH), mortgage, housing for carriages (ever noticed my "tackroom" is an oversized 3 bay garage? I can't store carriages in a 12x12 room like saddles at a riding barn), etc. $36,000/year -another conservative number!

Insurance: Most don't know it, but carriage driving is the most expensive thing to insure. The cost to insure horses for use as lesson horses is what prevents most people from having lesson horses for carriages, plus we have to insure our property, vehicles, etc. $10,000/year

We've only just gotten through my first year teaching with ONE horse and the costs are already at $100,000!

-My education:

Its hard to really put a number on this.... but lets look at the time and the energy I've spent acquiring the knowledge you're paying for...

I spent the past 18+ years pouring over driving information.... I've bought thousands of dollars in text books (that my students are welcome to borrow from my library). I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on lessons, clinics, and EXPERIENCE that you're paying for access to. International travel and education is not cheap and I fronted the cost so that I could learn and share that education with you!

-My connections:

I've made connections in the driving world. I've created a web of very talented, highly educated equine and driving professionals. With the cost of driving lessons you get access to this web that driving trainers have created. We can use our webs to get you harness, carriages, more education, horses, and anything related to the sport with the "in" to know you're getting the best product and the best price possible. You don't get that when shopping for harness on Amazon Prime.

I hope this helps shed some light on why driving lessons aren't cheap. I know the price is expensive. That is why I do everything in my power to give you the most I can out of every lesson. I typically don't schedule lessons back to back (I schedule them every 2 hours) so that you can generally get more than just 1 hour of my time, I try to give you all the information I can possibly pour into the lesson that I can, I am available just about 24/7 to answer questions virtually for my students, I work off hours to help my students get their driving equipment and needs, I work off hours to provide opportunities to my driving students (like shows and clinics), and I pour my heart and soul into making every moment my students are with me fun, educational, and uplifting. My student's wellbeing and growth is why I'm hear. I want the best for YOU!

Come take a lesson... I will do everything in my power to give you MORE than what you've paid for. That's always my goal! But remember, my costs a super high and I'm not trying to get rich, I'm trying to offset the expense so I can keep having people to my property for learning and FUN!