[0:01] Derrick Edwards: industry is it's a lot of secrets.
[0:04] Derrick Edwards: Nobody wants to work with each other.
[0:05] Derrick Edwards: And if we do, if providers work with each other better, we can have fair rates with the brokers.
[0:27] Nirav Chheda: Expert Talks. I'm Bambi CEO Nirav Chheda and I am with the owner of Premier Transit, Derek Edwards.
[0:35] Nirav Chheda: Derek, how you doing? Awesome. How are you doing?
[0:41] Nirav Chheda: Derek, you do an incredible job at branding and marketing your NEMT business.
[0:47] Nirav Chheda: In case it's not obvious, I mean, look at your background right now.
[0:54] Nirav Chheda: I want you to tell your story.
[0:56] Nirav Chheda: You started this NEMT company not too long ago, right?
[1:01] Nirav Chheda: Okay. And you're in Mobile, Alabama.
[1:04] Nirav Chheda: Um, you operate with how many vehicles?
[1:07] Derrick Edwards: Uh, six vehicles. Okay. And when did you start the We started uh it'll be two years in March of this year.
[1:16] Nirav Chheda: Of of this year. Okay. So, just under two years.
[1:19] Nirav Chheda: Mhm. Give me the story on how you decide decided to get into NEMT and the story of starting Premier Transit.
[1:27] Derrick Edwards: Okay. Well, my previous Well, first of all, I do have a transportation background.
[1:33] Derrick Edwards: I'm a former military guy. Uh I was in transportation management.
[1:37] Derrick Edwards: After the military, I uh managed U-Haul companies of Alabama, trained uh was vice president of the company for a while, then I branched off and started doing my own thing.
[1:49] Derrick Edwards: But the last uh thing I was doing was uh I was an insurance adjuster uh working from home making six figure salary.
[1:58] Derrick Edwards: But when I went into that position, I went into it with an exit strategy.
[2:04] Derrick Edwards: Didn't quite know what it was going to be and it just kind of just fell in my lap.
[2:09] Derrick Edwards: Um, I spoke with you before about a friend of mine who owns a uh NEMT or transportation company in Montgomery, Alabama.
[2:17] Derrick Edwards: And he would call me periodically and ask me, "Hey, you busy?
[2:21] Derrick Edwards: Can you drop this person off for me or take this person to this place?" And I would do it because we grew up together and take me 15, 20 minutes and he might just throw me a 100 bucks
[2:32] Derrick Edwards: or 150 bucks or whatever. So he started to do it more frequently, you know, and I was working from home, so it didn't really matter.
[2:39] Derrick Edwards: So I would just jump up and do it for him just to help him, you know, get his business going.
[2:45] Derrick Edwards: And I started to think, hey man, he called me a whole lot to do these same type of drop this person to dialysis, take this person to the doctor.
[2:56] Derrick Edwards: And for the amount of time and the amount of money he was paying me, I was thinking, what is he making if he's able to give me this amount for this short period of time?
[3:06] Derrick Edwards: And then I just started to look into it.
[3:09] Derrick Edwards: Um, and once I started to look into what what an NEMT business was, because I never thought about it.
[3:15] Derrick Edwards: And having an insurance background, I should have, um, I just once I started to do my research, I think I stayed up like two days straight like figuring out a game plan and and here we are.
[3:30] Derrick Edwards: I just jumped out and just made it happen.
[3:32] Derrick Edwards: [laughter] hours. 48 hours I was on it up and my wife would wake up and say go to sleep, come to bed.
[3:43] Derrick Edwards: I'm like I am tomorrow. But so I'm just trying to figure out things and just you know just see was was this the next move for me.
[3:52] Derrick Edwards: you know, I do have a couple online businesses and they do well, but um this business was one that I saw.
[3:59] Derrick Edwards: Actually, we started during COVID. So, he would call me during COVID.
[4:04] Derrick Edwards: So, once anyway, once I started going, um I first I thought about like, let me buy a fleet of vehicles.
[4:11] Derrick Edwards: Then I was like, well, I got a couple vehicles.
[4:13] Derrick Edwards: I'll just use my own vehicles, see if it works.
[4:16] Derrick Edwards: If it works, I'll expand. So, you know, then COVID, it was, you know, 2020, this time of year, it was shut down everywhere.
[4:26] Derrick Edwards: But what I noticed about this business was it was COVID proof.
[4:30] Derrick Edwards: It was pandemic proof. Like people still had to go to the doctor, still had to go to the dentist, still had to go to dialysis, you know, still had to, it was some appointments that you just couldn't do
[4:42] Derrick Edwards: over Zoom. And so when I recognize that even a pandemic couldn't shut this type of business down, I'm going all in.
[4:53] Derrick Edwards: That's the that's the long short version of how I get to where I am right now.
[4:59] Nirav Chheda: I love it. So you start the business and you started in March of 2021, Oh, sorry.
[5:13] Nirav Chheda: Was it March of 2022? Well, yeah.
[5:16] Nirav Chheda: Uh 2022. Yeah. 2022. Okay. So, you start this business in March of 2022.
[5:24] Nirav Chheda: And you start with how many vehicles at the time?
[5:27] Derrick Edwards: I started with two vehicles. Two ambulatory vehicles.
[5:33] Derrick Edwards: I took my personal SUV, which was a is a 2015 Audi and my Audi car, my wife's car.
[5:42] Derrick Edwards: She had a small Audi A4 and we started a business with that.
[5:47] Nirav Chheda: And those were ambulatory vehicles. Yeah.
[5:50] Derrick Edwards: Strictly ambulatory. Okay. Now, in hindsight, if I had a little more guidance, uh I probably would have used one of those vehicles, but I definitely would have got into the wheelchair market like because the the revenue is just
[6:10] Derrick Edwards: uh it's at least double, you know.
[6:12] Derrick Edwards: So, yeah. And and the thing about it is you can use the right type of wheelchair van can also serve as ambulatory.
[6:20] Derrick Edwards: So you can you can double duty that And now you've got six vehicles.
[6:27] Nirav Chheda: And how many of them are wheelchair accessible?
[6:30] Derrick Edwards: I have three wheelchair vans and three ambulatory vehicles.
[6:34] Derrick Edwards: The um the wheelchair uh vans, I have two Dodge Caravans who just have the ramp and we have a Ford Transit with the lift on it that also we have uh stretcher capabilities.
[6:49] Derrick Edwards: So it's a ambulatory. We have uh three seats in it.
[6:53] Derrick Edwards: Well, two two passenger seats plus the driver.
[6:57] Derrick Edwards: We have a capability to carry a stretcher and have a lift 800lb lift on it.
[7:06] Derrick Edwards: And word of advice for the transits or those anything with the lift on it, you don't need the big long ones.
[7:12] Derrick Edwards: Just get the shortest version. They're better for your drivers.
[7:15] Derrick Edwards: better on gas and you know just easy to handle.
[7:19] Nirav Chheda: Easier to handle. And you do work largely for private healthc care facilities, right?
[7:28] Derrick Edwards: Right. So, yeah, we I use everyone.
[7:32] Derrick Edwards: When I first started, I was just broker driven.
[7:36] Derrick Edwards: I didn't know anything but brokers.
[7:39] Derrick Edwards: And I I'm not going to plug brokers because brokers, you know, they have their way of getting in the way, but they can be used to uh for your success, you know, because uh we use brokers, we use
[7:55] Derrick Edwards: private pay facility, private pay, we use uh rehab facilities, we uh what some may call nursing homes.
[8:02] Derrick Edwards: Uh we deal with hospitals, hospital discharges, uh and just private health care.
[8:09] Derrick Edwards: locations that there are doctor's offices but they're they're uh not uh live in facilities.
[8:17] Derrick Edwards: So yeah, everything and also Medicaid.
[8:20] Derrick Edwards: Also Medicaid which is we consider that private pay because you know they we directly build them as well.
[8:28] Nirav Chheda: Okay. So Derek, if you look up and you Google search Premier Transit, right, in Alabama, you get 11 Google ratings and you have a perfect five-star review on Google.
[8:42] Nirav Chheda: Like you just look behind you right now, you got this neon, you know, awesome kickass logo right there, right?
[8:50] Nirav Chheda: Like you are a baller at branding and marketing your business.
[8:55] Nirav Chheda: That's why you've been able to win over all these private pay facility contracts.
[8:59] Nirav Chheda: Can you tell me the story of how you went about, you know, branding and marketing your business?
[9:05] Derrick Edwards: So, with branding and marketing, the first few months that we were out, I would see different companies that and I kind of would check Google them, you know, check their history and we'll bump into people because we're going
[9:19] Derrick Edwards: to the same place, same location.
[9:22] Derrick Edwards: So, I would see a lot of stuff that I would say definitely don't want to do that, may need to add this, but tweak it this way.
[9:30] Derrick Edwards: But what I saw around town was no marketing.
[9:35] Derrick Edwards: And this is not a business where you need, it's not a retail sales business, so you don't need billboards, you don't need a lot of ad space, uh, television commercials, you don't need that.
[9:50] Derrick Edwards: our motto is you don't get a second chance to make a first impression.
[9:55] Derrick Edwards: So to get these contracts, we would put our best foot forward.
[9:59] Derrick Edwards: Um, my only marketing I do is, and we may put a picture up later.
[10:04] Derrick Edwards: I don't know if you will, but our vans are wrapped.
[10:08] Derrick Edwards: You know, we have our logo, we have our website, we have our phone number, and we get so much business from people taking pictures.
[10:15] Derrick Edwards: Oh, I just saw your van.
[10:16] Derrick Edwards: I got a my dad's needs to go to the doctor.
[10:19] Derrick Edwards: Blas blas. So many uh opportunities come from that.
[10:24] Derrick Edwards: And when I was, you know, when I look up uh what we're doing over the day, the course of a day, we might have one vehicle that goes 100 miles within the county or outside of the county or
[10:35] Derrick Edwards: 200 miles. You know how that's just a ro a rotating uh billboard that's on wheels.
[10:40] Derrick Edwards: So we don't spend money on marketing.
[10:43] Derrick Edwards: We market we wrap our vehicles.
[10:45] Derrick Edwards: We we have our our ambulatory vehicles with our logo and phone number and website on it and that's the only marketing we do.
[10:53] Derrick Edwards: And we get tons of calls.
[10:55] Derrick Edwards: That's it right We get tons of calls.
[10:58] Derrick Edwards: Right. So, um, so to answer your question, when we go to facilities or locations, uh, we go in with our best foot forward drivers or myself, I normally go and do the whole calls or do, uh, uh, presentation,
[11:17] Derrick Edwards: but we we come in with our um, our uniforms on, our vehicles wrapped and clean.
[11:24] Derrick Edwards: We clean our vehicles every single day, inside and out, because we want I got a lot of contracts from people that would ride with other companies and they would say their vehicles didn't smell good.
[11:35] Derrick Edwards: They were dirty inside, they were dirty outside and they didn't feel comfortable.
[11:39] Derrick Edwards: And coming from the pandemic, you know, we want people to get in the vehicle and see a fresh, clean, smelling good vehicle that makes them Hang on, Derek.
[11:51] Nirav Chheda: I want to emphasize that you clean every single one of your vehicles on the outside and the inside every single day, right?
[12:02] Derrick Edwards: How much time does that take from your At the end of the day, it's a 15minute situation.
[12:11] Derrick Edwards: It's not that difficult. We have everything except the transit because that's the vehicle in the back because it's so tall that we can't drive it through a car wash.
[12:20] Derrick Edwards: But we have monthly passes where we drive through the car wash every day at the end of the shift.
[12:25] Derrick Edwards: The last person in the vehicle drives it through and we vacuum it out and we disinfect it.
[12:29] Derrick Edwards: We spray the areas that are not carpet with Lysol and it don't take long.
[12:37] Derrick Edwards: So that's the last thing you do is clean the vehicle, have it ready to go for the next person in the morning.
[12:42] Derrick Edwards: Make sure it's fueled, make sure it's cleaned, and have it ready to go.
[12:46] Derrick Edwards: It don't take long. Yeah. Awesome.
[12:50] Nirav Chheda: And then so you do the cold calling for, you know, facilities in the nearby, you know, Mobile Alabama and surrounding area.
[12:59] Nirav Chheda: Like do you get warm leads or warm intros?
[13:03] Nirav Chheda: Like do you is it is it often the case that a facility already knows about you before you make that cold call?
[13:10] Derrick Edwards: Absolutely. So we've had that happen both ways.
[13:13] Derrick Edwards: We had a facility that came in town that's a national brand.
[13:18] Derrick Edwards: They came in with three locations and they googled us.
[13:22] Derrick Edwards: They googled wheelchair transportation in Mobile.
[13:26] Derrick Edwards: Okay. And we're the first person that comes up.
[13:29] Derrick Edwards: We're the only people that comes up that's an NEMT company.
[13:32] Derrick Edwards: And it's amazing that nobody around has a Google presence.
[13:37] Derrick Edwards: That's very important. Your Google presence and your website to represent who you are.
[13:42] Derrick Edwards: Your your website should tell who you are.
[13:44] Derrick Edwards: It should have rep uh illustrated representations of who you are.
[13:49] Derrick Edwards: Uh do do good copy. Don't just uh have, you know, bad copy and information that's not leading anywhere.
[13:57] Derrick Edwards: You should be able to um apply for positions.
[14:01] Derrick Edwards: uh schedule rides, everything should be able to be done on your website.
[14:06] Derrick Edwards: So, we did have a company that came in town and they Googled us and they were struggling.
[14:12] Derrick Edwards: They for a couple weeks trying to find rides for their clients because they provide wheelchair transportation for new clients that they're trying to build.
[14:19] Derrick Edwards: They're trying to build a base.
[14:21] Derrick Edwards: And when they got in touch with us, I showed up.
[14:23] Derrick Edwards: We had a conversation. They gave us a uh immediately they said they like what they saw in the vehicles and my presentation and our uniforms and we did a deal.
[14:35] Derrick Edwards: So that was one that happened that way.
[14:39] Derrick Edwards: Some places um we we would just go out I go to Well, let me back up a little bit.
[14:47] Derrick Edwards: One plus of dealing with brokers is sometimes a broker may send you to a rehab facility or a nursing home to pick up someone for discharge or to pick up someone to take to a doctor's appointment.
[14:58] Derrick Edwards: So then I would introduce myself and ask who's over transportation and do an informal meeting.
[15:04] Derrick Edwards: Sometimes on the spot, sometimes they will ask me to come back.
[15:07] Derrick Edwards: But if you're doing a great job and the and the clients, the patients there saying, "Hey, I like this new company that you're dealing with.
[15:13] Derrick Edwards: Their vans are clean. They're courteous.
[15:16] Derrick Edwards: they're helpful. Like, can we ride with them all the time?
[15:19] Derrick Edwards: So, when you go there, you know, you kind of have a a good a head start in that arena.
[15:28] Derrick Edwards: visiting um like nursing home or rehab never go in and ask for a contract.
[15:35] Derrick Edwards: I know people listening probably be like, "What?
[15:38] Derrick Edwards: You want a contract?" That's the quickest way to get kicked out.
[15:42] Derrick Edwards: They don't. People are not into commitment.
[15:47] Derrick Edwards: Businesses, companies, CEOs. It's so hard to get through that initial red tape of going in and say, "Hey, I want you to sign this binding contract and and and use us exclusively, you know." No.
[16:03] Derrick Edwards: Offer a service agreement that's nonbinding.
[16:05] Derrick Edwards: Also, you want to do a service agreement because it's to your uh advantage because your rates may change.
[16:12] Derrick Edwards: You may gas may go up or a pandemic may happen or anything could inflation and you may need to adjust your rates to pay a competitive salary to your drivers and be profitable.
[16:24] Derrick Edwards: So you can also always have in your service agreement that hey we'll revisit this next year or 12 months and either resign the agreement or make adjustments as as needed.
[16:36] Derrick Edwards: So the service agreements, they're non-binding, but they're a way of getting a commitment.
[16:41] Derrick Edwards: And you also want to outline, hey, I expect, you know, if you doing a net 30, net 20, twice a month payments, you know, we have a written agreement of these are the services we're going to provide.
[16:54] Derrick Edwards: This is how we going to submit our invoices.
[16:56] Derrick Edwards: This is when we expect payment.
[16:58] Derrick Edwards: So everybody agrees on what's going on.
[17:01] Derrick Edwards: So, uh, service agreements are the best way, um, to get that done.
[17:06] Derrick Edwards: But to get a service agreement, we never go in and ask for a contract.
[17:10] Derrick Edwards: I would always go I wouldn't even go in and ask for a service agreement.
[17:14] Derrick Edwards: I would just speak to who whoever's over transportation.
[17:17] Derrick Edwards: Even if they have transportation or someone they're using, most of the time they're unhappy with And I that's what I found in my area.
[17:26] Derrick Edwards: So, I would just go in and just say, "Hey, we don't want to take over, but we would like to stand in the gap.
[17:32] Derrick Edwards: If you have if your transportation company that you're using or if your van breaks down that they have their own vehicles, you know, give us a call.
[17:40] Derrick Edwards: We like to stand in the gap and help you guys out when you're in a bind." That that works because I gave that spiel and I got back to the office and literally got a call as soon as
[17:51] Derrick Edwards: I sat down at my desk.
[17:52] Derrick Edwards: They call said, "Hey, can you take someone today?" So, but I had previously did the service agreement with them and they changed uh ownership.
[18:01] Derrick Edwards: So, I never started working with them.
[18:03] Derrick Edwards: And I went and revisited them, gave them that same little line and by the time I got back to the office, they asked me, "Hey, can you pick someone up today and now we we're the top.
[18:11] Nirav Chheda: We're they use us all the time." So, this is so interesting, Derek.
[18:17] Nirav Chheda: I haven't really heard of this.
[18:21] Nirav Chheda: this thing about the non-binding service it's like I mean, for it seems like the win-win, like you're better off than having an actual full exclusive contract with the facility.
[18:33] Nirav Chheda: The facility is better off, too.
[18:35] Nirav Chheda: I mean, did you learn this the hard way or h how did you come into this, you know, sort of motion of going straight for the non-binding service agreements?
[18:45] Derrick Edwards: So, I'm a I'm a thinker.
[18:47] Derrick Edwards: I'm a research guy, so I try to find out, you know, what works for others.
[18:52] Derrick Edwards: One one thing I did find out about this industry is it's a lot of secrets.
[18:56] Derrick Edwards: Nobody wants to work with each other.
[18:58] Derrick Edwards: And if we do, if providers work with each other better, we can have fair rates with the brokers.
[19:05] Derrick Edwards: But because we're so I don't want this guy to get the contract or this guy's getting more trips than I am, they're never going to run out of trips.
[19:14] Derrick Edwards: is enough room for everybody to make a lot of money.
[19:17] Derrick Edwards: So, we don't share information um as far as like fair rates for wheelchair, fair rates for ambulatory, what's a good rate for stretcher, what's a good rate for a gurney chair.
[19:28] Derrick Edwards: When you're new, you may come in and undercut other people, but you you're messing the market up because the brokers already take over half of the money, right?
[19:40] Derrick Edwards: So, if you come in and you you don't have experience and then you don't have anybody to mentor you or show you the way or have a a a rate sheet guide or anything to go by, you can
[19:51] Derrick Edwards: come in uh undercutting everyone else and then now the brokers want to lower their rates and that makes it hard to make to be profitable.
[20:00] Nirav Chheda: So, Derek, do you have any advice for, you know, younger any empty companies, the ones that are just starting out who are listening to this and say, "Okay, That makes sense, Derek.
[20:11] Nirav Chheda: Like, how do I get the mentorship I need to do it?
[20:13] Derrick Edwards: Right. Right. So, there everything you need is You can find it, but you're going to have to do some research because you may Google wheelchair rates and it may give you a rate for California, but you live in
[20:27] Derrick Edwards: Alabama. So, you have to kind of find out what's going on in your area.
[20:33] Derrick Edwards: Uh, one tactic I used, and I'm not even ashamed to say it, uh, I would call companies and say, "Hey, uh, I'm looking for a rate on a wheelchair trip.
[20:43] Derrick Edwards: I know someone who needs to go to the doctor and what about if they going out of town or what about this?" Or, you know, I'll throw all the scenarios out of there and then I just kind of
[20:52] Derrick Edwards: figure that out from there because when I first came in, um, I was shooting myself in the foot.
[20:58] Derrick Edwards: I was, you know, I was taking trips for rates that um it's funny right now, but [laughter] you know, we call it bought sense.
[21:06] Derrick Edwards: I bought a lot of sense, but you know, it makes sense now.
[21:08] Derrick Edwards: You know, I didn't do that long, but you know, it's just because I didn't have a I didn't have anyone to give me any guidance, you know, there.
[21:17] Derrick Edwards: So, you know, you just you have to do your research.
[21:21] Derrick Edwards: You have to do your research, but the information is there to be found.
[21:25] Derrick Edwards: People are going to try to sell you everything.
[21:28] Derrick Edwards: Everybody got to hustle. Oh, what's a what's a rate for this?
[21:32] Derrick Edwards: And they might sell you a rate sheet that's not even that have anything to do with your area, you know.
[21:38] Derrick Edwards: So, you know, you just kind of have to do your own research.
[21:41] Derrick Edwards: I wrote my own service agreements.
[21:42] Derrick Edwards: I write my own service agreements.
[21:44] Derrick Edwards: I I didn't pay anybody for it because each one is these things are not cookie cutter.
[21:50] Derrick Edwards: So, they have to be directed toward your company's model.
[21:57] Derrick Edwards: You know, um you know what you pay your drivers, you know what your overhead for your office is, you know what you're trying to make.
[22:04] Derrick Edwards: You know how many vehicles you have.
[22:06] Derrick Edwards: So, you have to be fair to yourself.
[22:08] Derrick Edwards: And you have to make sure that whatever agreement that you write, first of all, it's it's to your advantage.
[22:14] Derrick Edwards: You know, it's to your advantage.
[22:17] Nirav Chheda: Yeah. Mhm. So Derek, speaking of online research, you found out about Bambi online, right?
[22:24] Nirav Chheda: Absolutely I did. And you've been using Bambi for it's I think two months now, right?
[22:30] Nirav Chheda: For your Yes, I have. Um, you want to just quickly, you know, sort of say how you found out about us and what your experience has been using Bambi for your business and your experience with the Bambi team.
[22:43] Derrick Edwards: All right. I I'll be happy to do that.
[22:46] Derrick Edwards: So online in the beginning of uh I'm a big YouTube guy, so I watch a lot of YouTube uh with things that I'm [snorts] you know researching or trying to find out about.
[22:57] Derrick Edwards: Well, I found I'm going to go give this plug to this company uh MJ Reliable.
[23:01] Derrick Edwards: Um those girls are awesome. I really like what they're doing.
[23:06] Derrick Edwards: they are um they were one of the first people and they don't know this but they probably will know now that I got a lot of good information from them you know a lot of good information their videos
[23:17] Derrick Edwards: are so helpful and uh I'm subscribed to them and I just was thinking one day I was like man I hadn't saw a video from them in a while because I have so many subscriptions and u I just
[23:28] Derrick Edwards: open my phone up one day and it was a video of them with Bambi and my wife and I we've been talking with like, "Hey, we it's time.
[23:37] Derrick Edwards: We're doing too many trips. We we have to get some type of reliable software." And they had uh you were there and they had two companies that were using Bambi.
[23:47] Derrick Edwards: Um you know, kind of reminded me of myself uh with their upstart and how they're running their business.
[23:55] Derrick Edwards: And I just kind of watched the video and that's how I found about Bambi.
[23:58] Derrick Edwards: So, I just Googled it and no, the link they said at the end of the video, the video was very informative.
[24:04] Derrick Edwards: It was um it kept my attention the whole while and at the end I think MJ said uh there's a link is in the bio and I clicked the link and um sent the uh my info to Max
[24:17] Derrick Edwards: and he reached out to me and and you know I've been riding with you guys ever since.
[24:24] Derrick Edwards: But um I have to give my wife a lot of props because we were using uh Excel.
[24:32] Derrick Edwards: We were using Excel. She she came up with a format with Excel that only she could do and you know we would plug in all our trips and it would work so well because we could take that Excel
[24:45] Derrick Edwards: with all our trips on it and at the end of the month we wouldn't have to double work.
[24:48] Derrick Edwards: We could just send that as a bill to certain facilities that you know that we bill every month you know but uh you know we doing about 100 trips a week and I expect to do more because we
[25:00] Derrick Edwards: just bought another van. Um, we uh we just uh I mean business is just going up, but I'm not accept I'm at this point I'm not even accepting new business because I want the quality of service to stay
[25:14] Derrick Edwards: the same. You know, we have we'll get back to that though, but we have people in the wait that are waiting in the wings for us to um you know, do service agreements with.
[25:25] Derrick Edwards: So, God willing, that'll happen soon.
[25:27] Derrick Edwards: But um we I knew that we needed to get away from manually doing it.
[25:33] Derrick Edwards: I have like I say I have a transportation background.
[25:36] Derrick Edwards: So when I worked with U-Haul all those years, we used to schedule manually with a pencil, a pad and write each vehicle and schedule times.
[25:45] Derrick Edwards: So you know I knew how to manually do that and Excel was actually an upgrade from that.
[25:50] Derrick Edwards: But still at that point we I was like, you know, it was a lot of late nights because I get started early in the morning and after everybody's gone, I'm in the office 9 10 o'clock, you know, just
[26:00] Derrick Edwards: trying to make sure everything was in Excel and every every driver had their their uh trips for the next day and I was like it it's time to get a soft get a software that's user friendly and that'll
[26:13] Derrick Edwards: work for us. And um I did the demo.
[26:16] Derrick Edwards: I did the talk with Max and I looked at it and I said, "Well, actually I saw it on the MJ uh MJ Reliables video.
[26:24] Derrick Edwards: I said this really looks like it's user friendly.
[26:27] Derrick Edwards: Like we can use this." Like the drivers wouldn't because I have retired people, older people, younger people.
[26:33] Derrick Edwards: Some people just not, you know, they're just not savvy with technology.
[26:38] Derrick Edwards: But uh the drivers use it well with the app and it's definitely helped in my office.
[26:43] Derrick Edwards: We hired a new dispatch and office person this week and I kid you not 24 hours 48 hour the next day that Tuesday she was she was moving all around moving trips you know activating will calls doing I
[27:00] Derrick Edwards: was like awesome adding trips to the portal like it's it's that is that so I'm more efficient with using Bambi going to add more vehicles this week And u I mean I've been recommending this software to people in
[27:16] Derrick Edwards: NEMT groups I'm on online. They've been like hey what kind of software should you use because I've looked at other softwares.
[27:23] Derrick Edwards: I looked at the route genies of the world and these other places.
[27:27] Derrick Edwards: I don't know if you want be saying these different names but they just didn't impress me.
[27:32] Derrick Edwards: Either they were too complicated or both.
[27:35] Derrick Edwards: Too complicated or definitely too expensive.
[27:38] Derrick Edwards: So, Bambi is user friendly and is and is pocket friendly.
[27:43] Derrick Edwards: So, [laughter] so I was like, I'm going to give this a try and uh I love it.
[27:52] Nirav Chheda: I love Awesome, Derek. Well, thanks so much for being with us.
[27:57] Nirav Chheda: Run, Bambi, run. Yes. [laughter]
