Finding and bidding on government transportation contracts: SAM.gov, counties, and capability statements

Who buys rides in government

Government transportation work comes from many small buyers, not one big one. Each type of agency buys for its own program, writes its own contract, and posts its bids in its own place.

North Carolina shows how local this can get. In November 2025, Buncombe County posted its own NEMT request for proposals on the state’s electronic vendor portal, seeking a vendor to coordinate rides for the county’s Medicaid recipients under the state’s NEMT policy. How states run NEMT covers the delivery model in each state.

Get registered before you find the bid

Registration takes days, and bid windows can be a few weeks. Finish these steps before an opportunity appears.

SAM.gov

SAM.gov, the System for Award Management, is the registry every federal vendor joins. Federal rules require every offeror to be registered in SAM when it submits an offer, with narrow exceptions such as small purchase card buys.

• It is free. No charge applies to get a Unique Entity ID (UEI), register, or keep a registration current. A company that charges to register you is selling its own service, not collecting a government fee.
• Registration or UEI only. A full registration lets you bid on contracts. A UEI alone covers some transactions, such as being reported as a subawardee, but it does not let you apply for awards as a prime.
• What you will enter. Your taxpayer ID and legal name as they appear in IRS records, your physical address, a bank account for electronic payment, NAICS codes, and a long list of representations and certifications.
• How long it takes. SAM.gov puts average processing at up to three business days after you submit. The IRS check of your taxpayer ID and the Defense Logistics Agency’s CAGE code check can take up to ten business days.
• Renew every year. A registration stays active for 365 days from the date you submitted it.

Local buyers notice it too. The Southern Mississippi Area Agency on Aging asked for the bidder’s UEI on the title page of its 2025 transportation proposal.

NAICS codes and size

NAICS codes tell buyers what you do and set whether you count as a small business for set-aside contracts. Size is measured in average annual receipts.

State and local vendor accounts

Most states and many large districts run their own vendor portals. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools took only electronic responses for its 2026 student transportation RFP and warned that a new vendor account could take three to five days to activate.

Certifications can help. The federal grant rules tell agencies spending grant money to consider small, minority-owned, women-owned, and veteran-owned businesses, for example by putting them on solicitation lists. Buncombe County’s RFP encourages vendors certified by North Carolina’s Office of Historically Underutilized Businesses. If you qualify for a state certification, get it.

Where the bids are posted

Federal opportunities go to SAM.gov. Contracting officers must post a synopsis there for proposed contract actions expected to exceed $25,000, with limited exceptions. Actions between $20,000 and $25,000 are displayed in a public place or electronically instead.

State and local bids are scattered. Check these every week, or set up alerts where the site allows it:

1. Your state’s procurement portal.
2. County purchasing and social services pages in your service area.
3. Transit agency procurement pages.
4. The procurement pages of your Area Agency on Aging.
5. School district purchasing pages. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, for example, opened student transportation proposals on March 9, 2026.

The size of the purchase decides how formal the process is. Under the federal grant rules most local agencies follow, small purchases can be bought by collecting price quotes from an adequate number of sources, and micro-purchases can be made without quotes at all. Larger purchases need a formal method.

• Sealed bid (invitation for bids). Bids are opened publicly for local governments, and a firm fixed-price contract goes to the lowest bidder that meets every material requirement.
• Request for proposals. The agency publishes its evaluation factors and their weight, and awards to the proposal that is most advantageous considering price and other factors.

That is why introductions matter. A program manager who knows your company may call you for a quote on a small purchase long before a formal bid goes out.

Reading a real solicitation

A real county NEMT request for proposals shows what agencies weigh. Buncombe County’s RFP ran on this schedule:

The county estimated 4,300 trips a month, offered an initial one-year term with an option to renew for up to three years, and treated a pickup as on time if it happened between 45 minutes early and 15 minutes late. Proposals were scored on nine criteria.

Price was worth 15 percent. The other 85 percent went to proof that the company could run the service safely and report on it. A proposal that answers every criterion with specifics, such as training records, a complaint process, and sample reports, beats a lower price with thin answers.

Watch the questions deadline. In Buncombe County’s RFP, the question period was the only way to raise an exception to a term, and the county answered every bidder at once through a written addendum.

What a capability statement contains

A capability statement is a one-page summary of your company that you send to buyers, attach to responses, and hand out at vendor events. SBA guidance calls for five parts, and a NEMT version fills them like this:

Keep it to one page, front and back at most. Match every fact to your SAM profile. Write a version for each type of buyer: a transit agency cares about paratransit experience, and a school district cares about student safety and background checks.

Pricing a public bid

Agencies ask for prices in different units, and the unit changes your risk. These structures come from real 2025 and 2026 solicitations:

Build your number from your cost per vehicle hour, not from what a competitor charged last time. For example, a company whose loaded cost for a wheelchair van is $60 per hour, and whose average trip uses 50 minutes of van time counting the unpaid drive out, needs about $50 per trip before profit. If the agency pays per mile, convert that cost using the average loaded miles per trip in its data, and check the result with our cost per mile calculator. The full method is in how to price NEMT trips.

Then price the contract terms, not only the ride:

• Everything is in the price. Buncombe County’s proposal price had to cover all handling, administrative, and similar fees, and the vendor could not invoice anything the RFP did not allow.
• Multi-year rates are binding. Tracy Unified wanted rates for three school years up front and held bids open for 90 days. The Mississippi AAA capped yearly price increases at the change in the Consumer Price Index.
• Penalties cut revenue. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools paid half the fare when a student arrived over 30 minutes past the bell, and took 10 percent off weekly invoices that stayed late or wrong after one reminder or correction.
• Payment timing. Both North Carolina solicitations paid net 30. Add the time it takes to invoice, and plan cash for a month or more between a ride and payment.

Compliance clauses to expect

Public contracts carry clauses that private work does not. When federal money funds the contract, the agency must include specific provisions, and Buncombe County wrote them straight into its RFP.

Insurance is where small companies get surprised. Buncombe County asked for general liability limits of $1,000,000 for each occurrence with a $2,000,000 annual aggregate, a $1,000,000 combined single limit on auto liability covering owned, non-owned, and hired vehicles, employer’s liability, statutory workers’ compensation, the county as additional insured, and a waiver of subrogation. Get a quote on those limits before you bid, and know what a certificate of insurance must show. Typical premiums for each policy are in NEMT insurance cost. If the contract brings federal drug testing, our sample testing policy is a place to start.

State law adds its own list. North Carolina, for example, treats companies on the state’s Iran divestment list or its list of companies boycotting Israel as ineligible vendors.

A 30-day start

1. Register in SAM.gov and your state vendor portal. Put the renewal date on the calendar.
2. Pick your NAICS codes and apply for any state small or minority business certification you qualify for.
3. Write a one-page capability statement and a short past performance list with contacts.
4. List every county office, transit agency, AAA, and school district in your service area, with the name of the person who buys transportation.
5. Get insurance quotes at $1,000,000 limits for both auto and general liability, with higher limits for larger vehicles.
6. Book a free session with your local APEX Accelerator for help with registrations and certifications.
7. Set weekly bid alerts and read two closed solicitations from your area to learn the format before a live one opens.

Keeping a public contract

Public contracts renew on performance, and agencies judge performance from records. Buncombe County scored technology and reporting at 10 percent, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools wanted weekly invoices split by program. HealthRide keeps GPS-verified miles, timestamps, rider signatures, and the recorded wait on every no-show. Its on-time report shows how each week went. Each finished trip becomes an invoice at the rates you set for that payer, so a county or district contract is billed on its own price list. See how invoicing works.