About this episode
Larry Greene, who runs Emerald Coast Luxury Transportation out of the Florida panhandle after 29 years building a luxury fleet in Atlanta, took his NEMT operation from two vehicles to 17 in six months. Co-host John Maselli of Model 1 Commercial Vehicles supplied the first four, and Greene insisted on new BraunAbility converted Toyota Siennas rather than used stock because downtime is what kills the business. Before he had NEMT software his dispatchers were writing 130 trips down on paper by hand and assigning drivers to them.
Key takeaways
- Greene runs drive cams in every vehicle and spot checks footage daily across shifts that start at 3:00 in the morning. Anything alarming on the video can cost a driver the job.
- He turns away roughly 80 percent of driver applicants and says he pays about 20 percent above what those applicants report earning elsewhere, trading margin for full time 40 hour schedules.
- Stretcher work pays about four times what wheelchair work does but takes two crew members, so Greene bought stretcher capable vans first and is still pricing the gurney itself.
- Maselli warns the used vehicle market has not normalized. Owners are holding vehicles longer, trade-ins come back less desirable, and a cheap first van gets paid for again on the back end.
- The trip mix runs ambulatory largest, wheelchair second, stretcher third, covering dialysis, hospital discharges, pain management, and hospice, with runs from the panhandle to Miami, Tampa, and Gainesville.
Chapters
- 0:00 Introduction
- 1:17 Overview of Emerald Coast Luxury Transportation
- 10:45 Model 1's awesome vehicles and service
- 33:52 Getting into stretcher/gurney transport
- 41:09 Bambi's awesome software and service
- 44:57 RUN BAMBI RUN!!
