About this episode
Mike Cynar, Bob Doerr, and Dave Dilday co-founded On Time NEMT in Hampton Roads, Virginia in April 2026 and ran more than 200 trips in their first fourteen weeks, nearly all of them private pay. They spent two and a half months visiting nursing homes and assisted living facilities before buying a van, heard the same complaint everywhere, late or no-show, and named the company after the fix. Google Ads now drives 45% of revenue on roughly $1,500 a month, the average wheelchair trip pays $186 at time of service, and their pro forma says the fifth van is where the business turns profitable.
Key takeaways
- On Time NEMT ran over 200 trips in its first 14 weeks, almost all private pay, after two and a half months of facility visits before buying a single van.
- Google Ads produces 45% of revenue on about $1,500 a month in spend, with clicks running $3 to $10 depending on the service type.
- The ads playbook: exact match keywords in square brackets, negative keywords loaded before spending a dollar, and a weekly search term review to cut waste.
- A broker wheelchair trip pays $80 to $100, while their average private pay wheelchair trip pays $186, collected at the time of service.
- With employees driving instead of owners, the first three vans carry costs most operators never see, and the pro forma turns profitable at van five.
Chapters
- 0:00 "At least a million bucks a year. Profit."
- 0:15 Meet Mike, Bob, and Dave of On Time NEMT
- 0:33 The origin story: a deal that fell through, a company that didn't
- 1:11 Two and a half months in the field before buying a single van
- 1:38 The DMV was the biggest headache of the whole launch
- 2:16 The pain point every facility named: late, or no-show
- 2:47 Why they chose private pay over broker work
- 3:47 Naming the company "On Time" and building the systems to back it up
- 4:48 The private pay customer who cried
- 6:18 Google Ads is 45% of current revenue
- 7:59 Why broad match keywords are a death sentence
- 9:04 Exact match: the square brackets trick
- 9:56 Negative keywords, the single biggest lever in the account
- 12:00 The weekly search term review
- 12:47 Start at $20 a day, then scale
- 14:00 The real numbers: $1,500 a month, $3 to $10 per click
- 15:39 "Are you profitable yet?" No, and here's the pro forma
- 16:58 The magic number is your fifth van
- 17:11 Why the owner-driver model hides the real economics
- 18:27 Two years, 10 to 12 vans, a million a year in profit
- 18:55 What they charge: up to $900 stretcher, $150 wheelchair
- 20:00 Moving into stretcher work and the $1,000 a day goal
- 21:27 How Bambi scheduling makes "on time" possible
- 21:54 Manual vs power stretcher, and buying used off eBay
- 23:17 Why they bought brand new vans: limo, not Uber
- 23:42 Broker vs private pay: $80 to $100 versus $186, paid at time of service
