Ask an NEMT owner what this year’s target is and you get a revenue number. A million. Two million. Double last year.
When someone offers you forty more trips a week, a revenue target cannot tell you whether to take them. You know what they pay. Whether that covers what those trips cost you to run is a different question, and revenue says nothing about it. Your dispatcher cannot use it either, and they are usually the one deciding.
That is the test, and it is the only one worth applying: a target is real when someone who is not you can act on it without asking you first. Revenue fails because it is an outcome. The things that produce it are what a team can actually work with.
Make the margin floor a rule
The problem
“I accept or reject trips by gut.”
A margin floor that lives in your head protects nothing, because the person deciding whether to take a trip is usually the dispatcher, with ninety seconds before the caller needs an answer.
So turn the floor into a rule they can apply without seeing your books. Start with a minimum per loaded mile, built from your cost per mile in Fleet and tools. Run every account’s rates against it and you get two lists: trips accepted on sight, and trips that need a call to you first. Add a minimum per trip by type later, if short runs clear the mile floor and still lose money.
Fuel, wages and rates all move, so restate the rule to dispatch every quarter. A floor set two years ago is not a floor.
The three numbers have to add up
The problem
“My target is a number in my head, and it changes when the month is bad.”
Three numbers run an NEMT company: the trips per day you are building toward, the margin you will not go below, and the fleet that gets you there. You can probably name each one. The harder question is whether they agree, because they usually get set separately, in different moods.
They are tied together by one piece of arithmetic:
trips per day ÷ trips per vehicle per day = vehicles
100 trips per day ÷ 8 trips per vehicle = 13 vehicles
Across the fleets we see, a vehicle runs about eight trips a day on a six-day week. Twelve and a half, rounded up.
If you run nine vans, the target is not real until four more have a date and a budget against them. Working this through is often the first time an owner sees that the growth plan needs a fleet nobody planned to pay for.
Then check the target against what the company costs to run. Add up what leaves every week whatever you run (insurance, office and software, vehicle loans, dispatcher and office payroll, and your own pay) and divide by profit per trip. That is your break-even week, and the target should sit well clear of it. A company that only breaks even when the owner works for free has not broken even.
If the three numbers do not tie, decide which one bends. That is the real decision, and it is far easier to make in January on paper than in June with an account on the phone.
The buyer question
The problem
“The business can’t run without me.”
Once a quarter, ask one question honestly: if a buyer walked in tomorrow, could they run this company without you? It matters whether or not you ever sell. A buyer pays for written processes, a team that runs the day, contracts that are not friendships, and numbers someone else can pull. That is the same list that makes a company calm to own.
There is a concrete version. If you were unreachable for two weeks, what would break? Not slow down. Break. Write down the first three answers. They are next quarter’s work, and the SOPs in People are usually where the fix starts.
Then check that your targets reached the team. Ask your dispatcher, with no warning, what this year’s trips-per-day target is. If they cannot say it, the target is not shared yet.