NEMT Driver Cost Calculator (2027): What a Driver Costs per Hour and per Trip

What the driver cost calculator does

A driver’s wage is only the start of what you pay. Hours over 40 in a week cost time and a half. On top of every dollar of wages come your share of Social Security and Medicare, unemployment taxes, workers’ compensation, and any benefits you offer. This calculator adds all of it up for one driver and spreads it over every hour worked and every paid trip.

Federal rules count a driver who must wait with the van as working (29 CFR 785.15), so the hours include those waits. That is why the cost per trip can land well above the wage: you pay for the whole shift, but only the trips pay you.

Use the answer wherever another calculator asks for driver cost. The trip price calculator, deadhead cost calculator, wait time cost calculator, and profit per vehicle calculator each take a driver cost per hour. The break-even calculator takes a driver cost per trip.

The calculator is built for W-2 employees. If you are weighing contractors instead, read are NEMT drivers 1099 or W-2 first.

How to use the calculator

1. Enter the driver’s hourly wage before taxes.
2. Enter the hours the driver works in a normal week, from clock-in to clock-out, with paid waits included.
3. Enter your payroll taxes: 7.65% plus your unemployment tax rates, converted as shown below.
4. Enter your workers’ comp rate per $100 of payroll.
5. Enter what this driver’s benefits cost you in a week.
6. Enter the paid trips the driver runs in that week. Count each one-way ride as one trip.

The results change as you type. Reset to example puts the example numbers back, and Show the formula lists every step of the math.

What each number means

Box	What to enter	Where to find it
Hourly wage	Base pay per hour before taxes	Your pay plan or the driver’s offer letter
Hours worked a week	Every hour on duty, waits included	Time sheets, or the clock-in and clock-out times in your trip logs
Payroll taxes	Your share of Social Security and Medicare, plus unemployment taxes as a percent of wages	IRS Publication 15 and your state unemployment tax rate notice
Workers’ comp rate	The rate per $100 of payroll for your drivers’ class	Your policy’s declarations page, or your agent
Benefits a week	Health insurance, paid time off, and retirement for this driver	A year of those costs for the driver ÷ 52
Trips a week	Paid one-way trips in the same week	Your trip logs or broker remittances

Hourly wage

If you have not set a pay rate yet, federal wage data gives you a starting point. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts NEMT drivers as shuttle drivers and chauffeurs, a job group its definitions say includes nonemergency medical transporters. Here is what that group earned in May 2025:

Hourly pay, May 2025	All employers	Special needs and other ground transportation companies
Bottom 10% earn under	$13.51	$14.26
Median	$17.93	$18.09
Top 10% earn over	$26.47	$25.94

These are straight-time wages. BLS leaves out overtime pay, shift differentials, and benefits, which are the costs this calculator adds. Pay by state, and each state’s minimum wage, are in NEMT driver pay.

For a driver paid by the trip or by the day, divide a normal week’s pay by all the hours worked and enter the result. The Labor Department figures overtime for these pay plans on that same average, which it calls the regular rate (Fact Sheet #23).

Hours worked a week

Count the whole shift, not only the time with a rider on board. Under the federal hours-worked rules:

• A wait at a clinic while the driver must stay with the van is work (29 CFR 785.15).
• A gap is off duty only if you tell the driver in advance they may leave until a set time, and the gap is long enough to use as their own (29 CFR 785.16).
• Short breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes are paid (29 CFR 785.18).
• A meal break of 30 minutes or more, fully relieved of duty, is not work (29 CFR 785.19).

The calculator pays time and a half on every hour over 40, as the Fair Labor Standards Act requires for employees who are not exempt. The law works one week at a time, and the Labor Department does not allow averaging hours over two or more weeks. A 50-hour week followed by a 30-hour week still owes 10 hours of overtime, so run a heavy week and a light week separately.

Payroll taxes

Start with 7.65%. For 2026, IRS Publication 15 sets the employer’s Social Security tax at 6.2% of wages up to $184,500 and Medicare tax at 1.45% of all wages. A driver’s yearly pay sits far below that Social Security limit, so 7.65% applies to every dollar of pay.

Unemployment taxes work differently. They apply only to the first part of each employee’s pay each year, so entering the full rate overstates them. When a driver earns more than the wage base in a year, convert each one to a share of the whole year of wages:

Unemployment tax as a percent of wages = tax rate × wage base ÷ the driver’s yearly wages

The example driver earns $855 a week, or $44,460 a year. Here is what that driver’s unemployment taxes come to at new-employer rates as of September 2026:

Tax	Rate and wage base	Tax for the year	Percent to add
Federal unemployment (FUTA), with the full state credit	0.6% of the first $7,000	$42.00	0.09%
Texas, new employer, 2026	2.7% of the first $9,000	$243.00	0.55%
Florida, new employer	2.7% of the first $7,000	$189.00	0.43%
California, new employer, 2026 (UI plus ETT)	3.4% plus 0.1% of the first $7,000	$245.00	0.55%

With Texas taxes, the example’s payroll tax box becomes 7.65 + 0.09 + 0.55 = 8.29%.

Some states tax far more of the wage. Washington’s 2026 unemployment tax applies to the first $78,200 of each employee’s pay, rising to $82,000 on January 1, 2027, so it covers a full year of pay for most drivers. There, add the rate itself. For 2026, new Washington employers pay 115% of the average rate for their industry, with a 1% minimum.

Your rate changes as you build a claims history, so check the notice your state sends each year. California keeps new employers at 3.4% for two to three years. Texas sets new employers at 2.7% or their industry’s average, whichever is higher.

The federal tax can rise too. When a state has owed a federal unemployment loan on January 1 for two or more years in a row and does not repay it by November 10, its employers lose part of the 5.4% credit. California employers lost 1.2 points for 2025, so FUTA cost $126 per employee instead of $42. The Labor Department lists California and the U.S. Virgin Islands as possible credit reduction states for 2026, if their loans are not repaid by November 10, 2026.

Plan the cash, not only the rate. Because these taxes stop at the wage base, most of them are due early in the year. At $855 a week, a Texas driver passes the $9,000 wage base in the 11th week.

Workers’ comp rate

Most states price workers’ compensation per $100 of payroll. The insurer puts your drivers in a class, applies that class’s rate, and may adjust it for your own claims history. If your policy charges $5 per $100, enter 5. The simplest way to capture every adjustment is to divide last year’s premium for the drivers’ class by that class’s payroll and multiply by 100.

Washington charges by the hour worked instead, and its state fund publishes the rates. Companies that give on-demand, nonemergency rides to passengers with special needs, usually in accessible vans, belong in risk class 1404-12, cabulance and paratransit (WAC 296-17A-1404). Workers pay half of the medical aid, stay at work, and supplemental pension parts of the premium, and employers pay the rest.

Washington class 1404, 2026	Per hour worked
Base rate, before your experience factor	$2.0322
Deducted from the worker’s pay	$0.43155
The employer’s share	$1.60065

To enter a per-hour rate, turn it into a percent of wages: multiply it by the hours worked a week, divide by the wages a week, and multiply by 100. In a week with no overtime, $1.60 an hour on an $18 wage is 8.89%. Overtime lowers the percent, because Washington charges the same for every hour worked while the pay for that hour rises (WAC 296-17-31002). In the example’s 45-hour week, $1.60065 × 45 = $72.03, which is 8.42% of $855. Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries has proposed a 4.9% average increase for 2027.

The class follows how your business is set up. Washington puts cabulance service run by a taxi company in class 1401, at $0.9896 an hour in 2026, and cabulance run with an ambulance service in class 1405, at $1.9665. In any state, ask your agent which class your drivers are in and why. The guide to workers’ comp for NEMT drivers covers when coverage is required and how to lower the premium.

Benefits a week

Enter only what you pay for this driver beyond wages and the taxes above: health insurance, paid time off, and retirement contributions. Take a year’s cost and divide by 52. Bonuses you promise in advance belong in the wage instead, because they count toward overtime (see below).

For scale, the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures what employers spend. For private industry workers in transportation and material moving jobs, employers paid these amounts for each hour worked in June 2026:

Cost per hour worked, June 2026	Amount	Share of total pay and benefits
Wages and salaries	$24.97	68.6%
Paid leave	$2.13	5.8%
Insurance	$3.51	9.7%
Retirement and savings	$1.47	4.0%
Supplemental pay, including overtime premiums	$1.31	3.6%
Legally required benefits	$3.00	8.2%

These figures cover every private employer of these workers, at an average wage of $24.97 an hour, so use them to see which costs to count, not as your numbers. Two rows already have their own boxes. Overtime premiums are in the overtime math, and BLS defines legally required benefits as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation. Leave both out of benefits so nothing is counted twice.

Trips a week

Count paid one-way trips, so a round trip is two. Leave out no-shows and late cancellations that pay nothing. The driver’s time on them still has to be paid from the trips that did pay.

A worked example

The calculator opens with example numbers. They show how the math works. They are not market rates, so replace them with your own.

Step	Math	Result
Regular pay	40 hours × $18	$720.00
Overtime pay	5 hours × $18 × 1.5	$135.00
Wages a week	$720 + $135	$855.00
Taxes and workers’ comp	$855 × (7.65% + 5%)	$108.16
Benefits a week	Example amount	$50.00
Driver cost a week	$855 + $108.16 + $50	$1,013.16
Driver cost per hour	$1,013.16 ÷ 45 hours	$22.51
Driver cost per trip	$1,013.16 ÷ 40 trips	$25.33
Driver cost a year	$1,013.16 × 52	$52,684.32

The $18 wage turns into $22.51 for every hour the driver works, 25% more. Each trip carries $25.33 of driver cost, because the driver works 45 hours to run 40 trips.

What moves the answer most

The two tables below keep every other box at its example value and change one number at a time.

Trips a week, in 45 hours	Driver cost per trip
30	$33.77
35	$28.95
40	$25.33
45	$22.51
50	$20.26
60	$16.89

Ten more trips in the same 45 hours take $5.07 off every trip. Tighter schedules, fewer empty gaps, and fewer no-shows lower driver cost per trip without cutting anyone’s pay. See NEMT driver schedules and how to reduce NEMT no-shows.

Hours a week, with 40 trips	Overtime pay	Driver cost per hour	Driver cost per trip
40	$0.00	$21.53	$21.53
45	$135.00	$22.51	$25.33
50	$270.00	$23.30	$29.13
55	$405.00	$23.95	$32.93

Long days with the same trips cost you twice. Every hour past 40 costs time and a half, and there are no more trips to spread it over.

Then compare the answer with what a trip pays. Arizona’s Medicaid fee-for-service rates effective October 1, 2026 pay $11.15 for a wheelchair van trip plus $1.54 for each loaded mile, for trips that start in the Phoenix or Tucson areas. A 10-mile wheelchair trip pays $26.55. With the example’s $25.33 of driver cost, that leaves $1.22 for the van, fuel, insurance, and everything else. NEMT reimbursement rates shows where to find your state’s rates.

Overtime rules the calculator does not cover

The calculator applies the federal rule: time and a half after 40 hours in a week. Three things can make your real overtime cost higher.

Daily overtime in some states

The Labor Department’s state table, updated July 1, 2026, lists overtime by the day in these states:

State	Daily overtime
California	Time and a half over 8 hours in a day, double time over 12, and overtime on the seventh day of work in a workweek
Alaska	Over 8 hours in a day, at employers with 4 or more employees
Nevada	Over 8 hours in a day, for employees earning less than 1.5 times the state minimum wage
Colorado	Over 12 hours in a day, in the industries the state’s order covers

A California driver who works four 11-hour days has 44 hours, and 12 of them are overtime, not the 4 the calculator counts. In these states, work out daily overtime by hand.

Bonuses you promise in advance

An on-time bonus or trip bonus you announce ahead of time is not discretionary, so it counts in the regular rate for overtime (29 CFR 778.211). The regulation’s own example is a $12 hourly worker who earns a $46 production bonus in a 46-hour week. That worker’s regular rate is $13, not $12, and the overtime is figured on $13 (29 CFR 778.110). Add scheduled bonuses to the wage before you enter it.

The motor carrier exemption rarely helps

Some trucking drivers are exempt from overtime. The Labor Department’s Fact Sheet #19 says the exemption does not reach drivers of vehicles of 10,000 pounds or less unless the vehicle is designed or used to carry more than 8 passengers, including the driver, for pay. It also requires interstate transportation. Most NEMT drivers are owed overtime, and NEMT driver overtime covers the exceptions.

How to use the answer

• Feed the other calculators. Enter driver cost per hour in the trip price calculator to price private-pay rides, and in the wait time cost calculator to see what clinic waits cost you.
• Decide between overtime and another driver. With the example’s 12.65% of taxes and workers’ comp, an overtime hour costs $27 × 1.1265 = $30.42. A straight-time hour from a second driver costs $18 × 1.1265 = $20.28, before that driver’s benefits, training, and screening. When overtime shows up every week, price a part-time driver. See how to hire NEMT drivers.
• Test a pay plan. Run a per-trip plan through a busy week and a slow week. If the slow week’s pay divided by its hours falls under the minimum wage, you owe the difference, and the plan costs more than it looks.
• Check a rate before you sign. Compare driver cost per trip with what the contract pays per trip. If the driver alone takes most of it, the trip cannot cover the van.
• Budget the year. Driver cost a year is the number for your budget and a loan application. Add the unemployment tax that lands early in the year to your cash plan for the first quarter.