Larry Savage still remembers his first car. It was a 1974 Mustang that he bought in 1975 for $3,000.

“My first car gave me a lot of independence and freedom,” freedom he didn’t have when he was younger and without transportation, he recalled. “It empowered me. I could go where I wanted to, when I wanted to, and I could do many different things.”

Savage would go on to work for Children’s Village, Inc., an organization that seeks to provide a home and support to children who have been orphaned, abused, neglected, or have broken family relationships. It was there that Savage saw the importance of teens having transportation to jobs and school. So, after retiring, Savage founded Hearts of Wheels, an organization that provides cars to Greater Birmingham agencies that serve youth.

In 2023, the Community Foundation gave Hearts of Wheels a $20,000 grant to purchase and repair cars for underserved youth as part of the Workforce Transportation Support Program, providing local youth with the means to get to work, trade schools, and college.

We caught up with Savage recently to chat about what motivates him to keep Hearts of Wheels rolling.

What’s the mission of Hearts of Wheels?

The mission of Hearts of Wheels is to equip kids that are aged 17 through 26 with transportation. Transportation is a huge hurdle for our youth to overcome.

Tell us more about your organization’s process for helping youth in need.

We get our car donations and our grants, and we divide them up into what we call car vouchers, and we give those car vouchers out to nonprofit agencies that work with youth. We typically gift 20 to 30 cars a year.

We have training videos that kids are required to watch to get a car. To receive a car, they have to have a valid driver’s license, and they have to insure the car before that car is issued to them. We hold a lien on the car for 90 days. During that 90-day period, we want them to show us that they can do certain things — maintain employment, maintain insurance on the car, do 20 volunteer hours, which are required, and watch 10 video courses that will help them learn stuff like what it will cost you to have your driver’s license suspended in Alabama, basic car maintenance, basic car safety, and title loans.

How has the Community Foundation helped to support the mission of Hearts of Wheels?

The funding from the Community Foundation helped us purchase what we call our program cars. When we purchase those cars, we make car vouchers, and we give those car vouchers out to agencies that work with youth. Some of those agencies include Children’s Aid Society, Grace House Ministries, the Dannon Project, Youth Towers, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and a host of other agencies.

What makes this work so meaningful for you?

When I was a youth, I didn’t have a car, and I had to walk to work when I worked after school, and it was a big challenge. I needed to work to help support my family, and I didn’t have the means to buy a car. Some of my friends had cars, but I didn’t have one, and I guess I carried some of that with me when my wife and I became directors of Children’s Village. At Children’s Village, we had youth that would age out. Some of the kids would not go to college, some of them would have to go straight to work. And one of the things we wanted to make sure was that they did not walk away without a driver’s license and a car. So, we implemented a program there where during the summer of their sophomore year, they would work all summer, and whatever cash they accumulated, we would take them out looking for a car, and whatever they were short, we filled in that gap. So they drove the car during their senior year and, when they graduated, they drove away from Children’s Village empowered with transportation where they could get to jobs, easily, get to a trade school, or some of them even may drive to the local community college.

How did Hearts of Wheels get started?

Hearts of Wheels got started back in 2017. I was getting close to retiring, and I thought about the kids like the kids at Children’s Village. I was no longer there, but I felt like there was a challenge for a lot of these agencies to equip the kids that we want to serve with cars. So, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if I could create a nonprofit that could do that service for 20, 30, or 40 different agencies in the Birmingham area? I went to a friend of mine, who is now our president, and I spoke to him. He said that’s a wonderful idea. So, we created Hearts of Wheels, and we gave our first two cars in the fall of 2017 to Youth Towers.

What do you think is the biggest impact having a car can have on a person’s life?

The amount of job opportunities. You go from just a handful of jobs that you could get to maybe 100 different jobs. You could drive to a job at night when the busses don’t run. You could drive to a job during the holidays. You could drive to a job 30 miles away. You could drive to a fabricating shop that’s off the beaten path. You could drive to a manufacturing plant 40 miles away. You don’t have to ask anyone. The Uber cost is sometimes $30 a ride. That’s huge for a person making minimum wage.

What’s your hope for the future of Hearts of Wheels?

We are streamlining processes. Our goal is to be able to move a large quantity of cars in a short period of time, and to do that, especially as we go into the AI age, you’ve got to automate a lot of different things. Our whole interview process is online. We can take 1,000 interviews in a month, and we can take 1,000 applications, and we have a process that has a virtual garage. Our goal is to create a process where cars could flow like water in Alabama to the impoverished.

But we’re so content at what we do and so heartfelt at what we do, we will be satisfied if we can give away just two cars to two needy people. Our doors need to be open.

Learn more about Hearts of Wheels and the organizations that benefit from its good works in the video below. Learn more about our grant process here.