Buying a Concrete Business
Why Searchers Target Concrete
It is the second largest trade on this shelf by receipts per establishment, near three and a half million dollars, and the work is a scheduled dependency of every structure above it, which gives a good crew durable position with the general contractors who need them. The assets are real without being enormous: form inventory, a few trucks and pumps, at roughly eighteen percent of receipts. The concentration is worth seeing too, because a small number of large establishments hold a third of the workforce and they are not bidding the same jobs.
What the Market Pays
Sold listings in the concrete class ran 1.72x to 2.98x owner earnings across 2021 through 2025, with the middle at 2.25x, on a median sale price of $825,000. An appraisal firm publishes 2.23x to 3.03x, and the two nearly agree at the top while disagreeing by half a turn at the bottom, so a reader on the advisory band never sees the quarter of this trade that sold below 1.72x. The series is thin and lumpy: median sale price swung between roughly half a million and one and two tenths million across those five years, and the median sold listing took 251 days.
The Rebar Boundary Flips Between States
California's concrete classification excludes a contractor whose sole business is placing and erecting reinforcing steel, so a company that self-performs rebar as its main line is outside its own class. Nevada puts reinforcement squarely inside the concrete license, letting the holder place steel and other embedded materials as an integral part of the work. Same trade, opposite boundaries, and a company operating in both has to plan around it. Virginia licenses concrete as a named specialty and also treats it as a function of its heavy classification. Florida has no state category, so the answer there is local.
Half the Revenue Arrives as a Subcontract
Forty-nine percent of this trade's receipts come in as work subcontracted from another contractor, and eighty-seven percent of construction work is on privately owned projects. That combination is a working capital shape: the company buys a large material order weeks before a general contractor pays a progress draw against it, with retainage held behind that draw. Materials run about thirty-five percent of receipts. This is the trade where a retainage receivable aged by job is the single most useful schedule a seller can hand over.
What to Verify in Diligence
Three of these are records the company already keeps. The fourth is the argument nobody volunteers.
- Cylinder break results for two years, and any job that went to coring or a remediation plan
- The written silica exposure control plan, its annual review, and the medical surveillance file
- Form and shore inventory by condition, with the reshoring practice written down
- Open claims where the design was somebody else's, and what the contract says about who warranted the plans
- Delivery tickets sampled against pour schedules, looking for time between mixing and placement
Financeability Notes
A lender will see a thin, lumpy comparable market and lean on the five-year quartiles instead of any single recent year, which is the right instinct here. Working capital is the deal: half the revenue on a general contractor's cycle, materials at about a third of receipts, and retainage behind the draw. Forms are collateral that depreciates by use and not by year, which is an appraisal question the agency may reach for. And in California a shop whose sole business drifted into reinforcing is outside its classification, which turns its receivables uncollectible and hands the customer a claim to recover what was already paid.
Terms in This Industry
Cylinder break test
The samples cast at the pour and crushed later to prove the concrete met its strength.
Shoring removal strength
When the forms and shores may come out, which is a strength finding and not a date on a schedule.
Silica exposure control plan
The written plan and the medical program that come with cutting and grinding cured concrete.
Ready-mix discharge limit
The clock that starts when water meets cement and ends when the truck must be empty.
Implied warranty of plans
The rule that an owner who supplies the drawings warrants they will produce a sound result.
What the Data Says
23,350 establishments employed 272,692 people in 2023, and the 405 establishments with 100 or more employees, 1.7 percent of the trade, held 35.1 percent of the workforce.
Source: US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 (NAICS 238110)
$78.74 billion in receipts across 23,110 establishments in 2022, an average of $3,407,351 each, with 49.2 percent of receipts subcontracted in from other contractors and 87.1 percent of construction work on privately owned projects.
Source: US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census (NAICS 238110)
Cement masons and concrete finishers: 206,170 employed nationally, median annual wage $57,020, mean $60,050.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025 (SOC 47-2051)
Enter earnings to apply this industry's cited band.
A sanity check against asking prices, not a valuation.
Holding a live deal in this industry? Underwrite it with the comps, cited band, and charge-off rate pre-loaded.
Compare bands across industries in the cited multiple bands by industry.
Who Else Is Buying in This Industry
No consolidator is confirmed in this trade from a primary source. Silence means unverified, not uncontested: check the current list before assuming a quiet market.
Buyers is the shelf these come from, ordered by who closed something most recently.
What It Costs to Replace the Owner
The multiples above are quoted on SDE, which adds the owner's pay back into earnings, so they hold only if you do the owner's job. Hire someone instead and the going rate for the role comes back out. For this trade that is usually the lead who runs the trade crews, paid a median of $79,920 a year nationally. Subtract it from SDE before applying any multiple, because at a 3x multiple that wage also takes about $239,760 off what the business is worth to you.
First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (2025), national, all industries, before payroll taxes and benefits. Every role, and the same arithmetic worked end to end, is in Manager Wages.
The Numbers That Run This Business
- Subcontracted-in share of revenue
- Cylinder break pass rate
- Retainage receivable by age
- Yards placed per crew day
- Form inventory turns