The Retire Your Ride program is an initiative delivered by Summerhill Impact with the financial support of the Government of Canada with the goal of accelerating the removal of older, higher-polluting vehicles from the road. Various incentives are provided to reward people for doing so, and all vehicles that are received are recycled in an environmentally friendly way.

Parachute Software was selected to provide the web-based software infrastructure for the program, based on their experience with designing and implementing the technology that processes the Car Heaven program. The software platform provided for the Retire Your Ride program includes the complete tracking and processing of vehicles through the program and the delivery and redemption of various incentives to the program participants. Parachute Software also manages the technical requirements of the software to ensure the software is running 100% of the time and data is routinely and securely backed up and available.

The software was built to be very flexible and end-user configurable to adapt to the continuous evolution of the program’s incentives and partners. New incentives such as transit passes and auto manufacturer discounts have been added since the initial deployment, with this work being completed without requiring any additional development. Many different program partners are responsible for managing information for the program, and the software provides a unique user experience based on the role of the user. In total, there are over 4,000 users that log into the software including call centre users, government officials, car dealerships, transit authorities and automotive recyclers.

The Retire Your Ride program ended on March 31, 2011 and successfully recycled over 135,000 vehicles.