NEMT Trips per Day Calculator (2027): How Many Trips One Van Fits in a Shift

What the trips per day calculator does

The calculator shows how many one-way trips a single van can run in one shift. It counts every minute a trip ties the van up, not only the ride. Each trip starts with an empty drive to the pickup. Then the driver waits for the rider, loads them, drives, and unloads at the other end. The calculator adds those minutes, takes the breaks out of the shift, and divides.

Use it before you tell a broker how many trips you can take, when you plan a new van or a new contract, and when a van keeps finishing the day with fewer trips than you expected. The answer is a ceiling for trips spread evenly across the shift. Real days bunch up around appointment times, so check it against your trip logs.

Count each one-way ride as one trip. Texas Medicaid’s NEMT handbook for its health plans (version 2.0.1, effective August 1, 2021) defines a trip leg as transportation of a member from the point of origin to the destination. A ride to the doctor and the ride home are two trips.

How to use the calculator

1. Enter the shift length in hours, from the first trip out to the last drop-off.
2. Enter the minutes in that shift with no trips: meal breaks, fueling, and cleaning.
3. Enter the average minutes a rider spends on board, from pickup to drop-off.
4. Enter the minutes spent loading and unloading, at both ends of a trip together.
5. Enter the average empty drive from one drop-off to the next pickup.
6. Enter the average wait at each pickup, for the pickup time or for the rider.

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
Shift length	Hours the driver and van are on duty	Your driver schedule or time records
Breaks and fueling	Minutes in the shift with no trips	Your break policy and a normal day’s fuel stops
Minutes with the rider on board	Average minutes from pickup to drop-off	Trip logs: drop-off time minus pickup time
Loading and unloading	Minutes getting the rider in, secured, and out, both ends together	Time a few trips, or read stop times from your logs
Drive to the next pickup	Average empty minutes between trips	Trip logs: one drop-off time to the next arrival
Waiting at each pickup	Minutes from arriving to the rider boarding	Trip logs: arrival time to pickup time

Shift length

Enter the hours the van is out with a driver. If drivers start with a vehicle check or end with paperwork, leave that time out or add it to breaks, since the van runs no trips then.

Some rules limit long days. Federal hours-of-service rules cover passenger-carrying commercial motor vehicles in interstate commerce: vehicles rated at 10,001 pounds or more, or designed or used to carry more than 8 passengers including the driver for pay (49 CFR 390.5). A driver of one may not drive more than 10 hours after 8 hours off duty, or drive at all after 15 hours on duty (49 CFR 395.5). A van rated under 10,001 pounds that seats 8 or fewer, including the driver, and runs only in-state trips falls outside those rules, but state and local rules may apply. Long shifts also bring overtime, which the guide to NEMT driver pay covers.

Breaks and fueling

Federal law does not require lunch or coffee breaks, the U.S. Department of Labor says. Some states do. California requires a meal period of at least 30 minutes for a work period of more than five hours a day, which employer and employee can waive by mutual consent only when the day is no more than six hours (Labor Code section 512). The Labor Department’s table of state meal period laws, dated January 1, 2023, lists the other states with a rule.

Whether a break is paid does not change this box. Rest breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes count as hours worked (29 CFR 785.18). A meal period of ordinarily 30 minutes or more is not work time, but only when the driver is completely relieved from duty (29 CFR 785.19). Either way the van runs no trips, so enter all of it here, along with fueling and cleaning.

Minutes with the rider on board

Take it from your trip logs: the drop-off time minus the pickup time, averaged over a normal week. If you are planning trips you do not run yet, use the miles on the trip offers and your usual speed on those roads.

Shared rides stretch this number for each rider. Programs cap how much longer a ride can take:

Program	Ride time limit
MTM Health, Virginia (approved August 10, 2026)	On a shared ride, 45 minutes over the average direct travel time
Rhode Island contract with MTM (effective July 1, 2025)	On a shared ride, 45 minutes over the average direct travel time
Georgia Medicaid (July 1, 2026)	On a shared ride, 45 minutes over the average direct travel time
Texas Medicaid health plans (August 1, 2021)	On a shared ride, 1 hour over the average direct travel time
New York Medicaid (August 25, 2023)	Any ride under 1 hour, barring exceptions for location, bad weather, or unexpected traffic

To run the calculator for shared runs, split each part of the run by the riders on it. Two riders sharing a 30-minute ride count as two trips of 15 minutes each. The guide to multiloading and the entry on maximum ride time cover the rules in more detail.

Loading and unloading

This is the time at the curb or the door at both ends of the trip. It depends on the level of service the trip calls for. MTM Health’s Virginia handbook (approved August 10, 2026) describes three:

• Curb-to-curb, the default. The driver opens and closes the doors, helps the rider in and out, and folds and stores a wheelchair or other mobility device as needed.
• Door-to-door. The driver walks the rider from the door of the pickup point to the vehicle and helps them in.
• Hand-to-hand. The driver hands the rider to a facility staff member, family member, or other responsible person at the destination.

Before the van moves, the handbook has drivers confirm that every passenger is seated, every seat belt is fastened, and every wheelchair and wheelchair rider is secured. Wheelchair trips take longer at both ends. If one van carries mostly wheelchair riders, run the calculator with that van’s own numbers. The guide to wheelchair securement covers the steps.

Drive to the next pickup

This is the empty drive from one drop-off to the next pickup, also called deadhead. It usually earns nothing. CMS guidance (SMD 23-006, September 28, 2023) says miles driven with no Medicaid member in the vehicle, including the drive back after a rider does not show, generally cannot be paid as a service. States may build that cost into their rates, and may pay it separately only in limited cases through a state plan amendment. Every empty minute you cut is time for another paid trip. The deadhead cost calculator prices those miles.

Waiting at each pickup

Waiting is the time from arriving at the pickup to the rider boarding. Each program sets how long a driver waits before marking a no-show:

Program	Wait rule
MTM Health, Virginia (approved August 10, 2026)	A no-show only if the rider is not ready within the pickup window, 15 minutes before to 15 minutes after the scheduled pickup
Rhode Island contract with MTM (effective July 1, 2025)	The provider is not required to wait more than 10 minutes after the scheduled pickup
Georgia Medicaid (July 1, 2026)	The provider is not required to wait more than 10 minutes after the scheduled pickup
Texas Medicaid health plans (August 1, 2021)	At least 10 minutes after the scheduled pickup before a no-show
New York Medicaid (August 25, 2023)	At least 15 minutes after the scheduled pickup before a no-show
CareOregon (February 2024)	At least 15 minutes after the scheduled pickup, and the driver tells dispatch before leaving

Arriving early does not buy time. Virginia, Rhode Island, and Georgia say a rider never has to board before the scheduled pickup time. CareOregon does not let drivers pick a rider up early unless the rider chooses to go. In Georgia, the 10-minute wait starts at the scheduled pickup time even when the van arrives early. A van that arrives 10 minutes early at every stop loses those minutes just as it would for a rider who comes out late.

Include waits during short stops, too. CareOregon has drivers tell riders that a wait at a stop such as a pharmacy cannot run past 15 minutes. If your driver waits through an appointment for the ride home, add that time here for that trip. The pickup window entry explains how windows are set.

A worked example

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

Step	Math	Result
Minutes for each trip	20 on board + 10 loading + 10 empty + 5 waiting	45 minutes
Minutes for trips	10 hours × 60 minus 30 minutes of breaks	570 minutes
Trips a shift	570 ÷ 45 = 12.7, rounded down	12 trips
Trips per vehicle hour	12 trips ÷ 10 hours	1.2
Share of the shift with a rider on board	12 × 20 = 240 of 600 minutes	40%
Minutes left in the shift	570 minus 12 × 45 = 540	30 minutes

The van carries a rider for 4 of its 10 hours. Loading, empty driving, and waiting take 5 more. Breaks and the 30 minutes left over take the last hour, and those 30 minutes are not enough for a 13th trip of 45 minutes.

What moves the answer most

The four trip boxes feed one total: the minutes for each trip. Ten more minutes costs the same trips whichever of them it comes from. This table changes one or two boxes at a time and keeps the rest of the example.

Change from the example	Minutes for each trip	Trips a shift
None	45	12
Waiting 15 minutes at each pickup instead of 5	55	10
Driving 20 minutes to each pickup instead of 10	55	10
Loading and unloading 20 minutes instead of 10	55	10
30 minutes with the rider on board instead of 20	55	10
Waiting 3 minutes at each pickup instead of 5	43	13
Driving 5 minutes to each pickup instead of 10	40	14
Driving 5 minutes and no waiting	35	16
An 8-hour shift instead of 10	45	10
A 12-hour shift with 60 minutes of breaks	45	14

Watch the minutes left in the shift. In the example, 30 minutes sit unused. Cutting 2 minutes from every trip frees 24 more, and 12 trips of 43 minutes leave 54 minutes, enough for a 13th trip. When the minutes left come close to one trip, a small cut anywhere adds a whole trip.

How to check the answer against a real day

The calculator assumes trips follow one another evenly all shift. Real days do not, because appointment rules push trips into the same hours. Texas Medicaid health plans schedule riders to arrive at least 15 minutes and no more than one hour before the appointment, unless the member asks otherwise. A rider with the first or last appointment of the day may not be dropped off more than 15 minutes before the office opens or picked up more than 15 minutes after it closes. CareOregon does not allow drop-offs more than 15 minutes before a facility opens unless the member asks. So a morning full of 8 a.m. appointments cannot all fit in one van, whatever the calculator says. The guide to NEMT scheduling shows how to build runs around those windows.

For an outside check, look at public transit’s demand response service. In report year 2024, demand response services reporting to the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database carried about 139.7 million passenger trips in about 72.6 million vehicle revenue hours. That is 1.9 trips per vehicle revenue hour. The database counts a trip each time a passenger boards, and revenue hours leave out driving to and from the garage, so compare with care. If the calculator shows one van running far more trips per hour than that, look again at the minutes you entered.

Your own logs are the best check. On a normal day, divide the trips each van completed by the hours it was out. That is its trips per vehicle hour. The guide to NEMT vehicle utilization covers how to raise it.

How to use the answer

• Tell each broker your real capacity. MTM Health’s Virginia handbook (approved August 10, 2026) assigns trips by each provider’s capacity, hours of operation, trip distance, and credentialing status. Trips you cannot run are expected back at least 24 hours before the pickup time. Its standards include on-time performance above 95% and vendor no-shows, meaning assigned trips a provider fails or refuses to complete, below 0.25%. Accept the trips your vans can run on time. See improving on-time performance.
• Turn trips per hour into money per hour. Revenue per vehicle hour = trips per vehicle hour × average pay per trip. At Arizona’s fee-for-service rates effective October 1, 2026, a 10-mile wheelchair van trip that starts in the Phoenix or Tucson metro area pays $11.15 (A0130) + 10 × $1.54 (S0209) = $26.55. Twelve of them bring in $318.60 a shift, or $31.86 for each of the 10 hours.
• Check that the van pays. The profit per vehicle calculator sets a van’s trips against its costs, and the revenue calculator adds up a month of trips by payer.
• Size the fleet. Enter the trips a shift in the “trips one vehicle runs a day” box of the fleet size calculator to see how many vans and drivers a day of trips takes.
• Find the minutes to cut. Run the calculator with each van’s own logs and look for the box that is out of line. Long empty drives call for tighter route planning. Long waits call for reminder calls the day before, which the guide to reducing no-shows covers.
• Record real times. MTM Health’s Virginia handbook compares documented travel time with trip mileage, and it counts claims where one driver shows in two vehicles, or two drivers in one vehicle, at the same time. Plan on the times your vans really run, and log them as they happen. The guide to NEMT trip documentation covers what to record.