The original concept was a taxi company utilizing electric vehicles, which is a great fit in Portland. However with the launch of Uber in the city and existing competition, they shifted to the NEMT (non-emergency medical transportation) market just about 1 year ago. This industry is fractured, due for a roll up, and has tremendous, never ending clientele.
Currently, aside from a few mom & pop operations, Broadway Taxi handles the bulk of the medical transport in Portland. Here’s the thing – they don’t really want it. Taxi drivers traditionally don’t want to wait 21 days for a flat fee. They don’t like to wait for passengers at a Dr.’s office. There’s seldom a tip. Also the medical provider must keep complaints down to keep the Medicaid contractors happy. Ecocab drivers are on salary, so from a service perspective, our drivers will wait for a passenger, assist with the disabled, and offer an overall higher quality service in an eco-friendly vehicle.
We are currently the number one provider with Access2Care who controls 90% of the medical transport billing market in Portland, however due to our fleet size (46), we only handle about 20% of their business. Broadway Taxi handles the remainder, but the provider is asking us to grow so they can give us the business. All of the customer’s request EcoCab, and by contract with Medicaid they have to try their best to give the customer their first choice.
The most important component now is the guaranteed business in Portland and other cities thru Access2Care, which is only one of the 4 largest national billing companies. Medicaid transportation alone is a 4 billion dollar industry, not to mention all of the insurance companies and private facilities we can potentially contract. They want us everywhere. The industry is ripe for rollup and the story is very relevant, touching on a handful of investment sectors this year. Green Energy, Medical, Transportation, Technology – all topics in the news every day. 2017 brings us 38 new electric car models from the big 4 alone and finally in a price range that makes sense for this industry.
Access2Care is owned by AMR, a 6 billion dollar company that isn’t going away any time soon.
So in short - We are focused on the NEMT business and have been pulling away from taxi. Since all of the medical work is daytime, we’ve supplemented with taxi until recently, where we are now shifting to courier work which is far more profitable for off hours.
For Det - Longview is just taxi. They had 6 cars, of which 4 have been moved to Portland. LIBE has nothing to do with the 2 car taxi business in Longview.
AI
