Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Special Needs Transportation Service Revenue Benchmark
A special needs transportation service carries people with disabilities, older adults and others who need assistance to medical appointments, day programs, dialysis and other destinations, often as non-emergency medical transportation funded by Medicaid, brokers or agencies. Wheelchair-accessible vehicles, trained drivers and contracts with payers define a business built on scheduled trips.
Average Special Needs Transportation Service Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every special needs transportation service with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of services gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.
≈$1,586,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
3,662
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $5.8 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $5.8 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 3,662 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $1,586,000 per employer establishment.
Scope: Special Needs Transportation, NAICS 485991. The category covers transportation services for people with disabilities, the elderly and others who need assistance, including non-emergency medical transportation. Taxi, rideshare and ambulance services are counted in separate categories. Classified separately in group 4859: 485999 All Other Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.
Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed September 2026
Employer Establishments at Year Five Smaller cohort
Other Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation, NAICS 4859, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
46.2%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 44.0 to 48.1 percent. This benchmark covers Other Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation, NAICS 4859, as a whole, and this category accounts for 3,662 of the 5,527 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈37% |
Payroll share of receipts, Special Needs Transportation, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 37.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a substantial share because drivers who assist passengers are the service, and each trip needs a trained driver in an accessible vehicle for its whole duration.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes vehicles, lifts, fuel, insurance and the administrative cost of billing brokers and agencies, which together carry the rest of a provider's spending.
Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data
How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid employees per employer establishment | 16.2 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1.06 |
Scale and ownership, Special Needs Transportation, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 16.2 people, and the industry counted 1.1 employer establishments per firm. A provider of that size runs a fleet of accessible vans with drivers, dispatch and billing staff, and the establishments per firm figure shows a trade of single-location operators with a few multi-site companies.
These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.
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Data Source Notice
This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.
Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.
Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis
Special Needs Transportation Service: what a contract-funded, scheduled-trip business looks like behind an average.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- Who pays for the trips? Medicaid brokers, managed care plans, county agencies, day programs and private-pay families reimburse at different rates and with different paperwork, and a provider's payer mix decides its revenue per trip. The census counts all sources in one figure.
- How are trips scheduled? Scheduled recurring trips to dialysis and day programs fill vehicles predictably, while on-demand medical trips arrive with little notice and scatter across the day. Route density and dead time between trips decide whether a vehicle pays for itself.
- Which rules govern the vehicles and drivers? Vehicle, driver, screening, drug-testing and insurance requirements can come from federal or state rules as well as from payer and broker contracts. Compliance is a permanent cost and a barrier to entry that the benchmark cannot show.
- How stable are the contracts? Broker contracts are rebid periodically and rates can be cut with little notice, so a provider dependent on one contract carries real risk. Contract turnover is a central feature of the trade that a single census year does not reveal.
- What do accessible vehicles cost? Wheelchair lifts, ramps and securement systems add substantially to vehicle cost and maintenance, and vehicles wear quickly in daily service. The fleet is the main capital cost and sits outside a revenue total.
- How much time is spent waiting? Waiting and dead time between scheduled pickups can consume driver capacity, and some contracts may not reimburse that time separately, depending on the payer and contract. The gap between driver hours and billed trips shapes the payroll share more than wage rates do.
Sources and Methodology
Revenue, establishment counts, payroll, employment and firm counts on this page come from the 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics, published by the US Census Bureau. Averages and shares are BusinessNES calculations from those published totals, and each one names the two figures it divides.
The Census counts employer establishments, meaning each provider with paid staff at a physical base. A driver operating one van alone is not counted, and taxi, rideshare and ambulance services are counted in separate categories.