Buying a Courier and Delivery Business

First, the Classification Question

This is the trade where who the drivers are decides what the business is worth. A 2024 federal rule setting a six-factor economic-reality test is still on the books. The agency that enforces wage law has said it will no longer apply that rule in investigations, reverting to older guidance while a further rulemaking sits proposed with no final rule. Price the labor model, not the label on it.

Why Searchers Look at Local Delivery

Volume is contracted, routes repeat, and the customer is a business with a shipping obligation instead of a consumer with a choice. Entry is easy, which is the trade's problem and its opportunity: the operators are numerous and small, and the ones that survive have accounts nobody bids on because service has been reliable for a decade. The equipment is cheap enough that the business is really a dispatch operation with vans attached, which means the value sits in the accounts and the drivers, not on the balance sheet.

What Delivery Books Trade For

Courier work has no benchmark page of its own. Two classes bracket it and the publisher names both. Routes, which it describes as including delivery routes for bread, food and parcel brands, sold between 0.92x and 2.22x SDE with a 1.26x median on a $120,000 median sale price. Trucking companies, which it says include line-haul operations contracted with large parcel brands, sold between 2.29x and 3.56x SDE on a $1,137,500 median. A single-route book prices toward the first and a multi-truck contracted operation toward the second, which is a spread of more than a full turn.

The Permit the Customer Also Has to Check

Interstate for-hire work brings federal operating authority at any weight, with a $300,000 insurance filing for a fleet of vehicles under 10,001 pounds, and running beyond the scope of that authority is itself a violation. Work inside one state answers to the state, and some states reach vehicles the federal safety rules do not. California defines a commercial motor vehicle to include any vehicle used to transport property for compensation whatever its weight, requires a permit, and then bars anyone from engaging a carrier that lacks one. A permit lapse is therefore a customer problem as much as an operator problem.

What to Verify in Diligence

The record to assemble before the offer holds:

• ✓Driver arrangement: employee, leased contractor, or app-sourced, with the paperwork for each
• ✓Settlement statements and every charge-back item, not a summary cost line
• ✓State motor carrier permit, current and in the right entity's name
• ✓Federal registration and operating authority if any work crosses a state line
• ✓Revenue by account, with the term and notice period on each
• ✓Any wage claim, audit, or state classification determination in the last five years

Financeability Notes

Vans are thin collateral, counted at half of net book value and needing no lien below twenty thousand dollars, so the file rides cash flow and the guaranty. Size eligibility depends on which code the business is under: local delivery is tested on thirty-four million dollars of receipts while courier and express services is tested on fifteen hundred employees, which is a different question entirely. Once the purchase price reaches three million dollars, the program requires a quality of earnings alongside the valuation, and it asks that report to speak to customer concentration.

Terms in This Industry

What the Data Says

• Courier work has no benchmark page of its own, and two classes the publisher does break out bracket it in its own words. Routes, described as including bread, food and parcel delivery routes, sold between 0.92x and 2.22x SDE with a 1.26x median on a $120,000 median sale price. Trucking companies, described as including line-haul operations contracted with large parcel brands, sold between 2.29x and 3.56x SDE on a $1,137,500 median.

  Source: BizBuySell route and trucking benchmarks (sold listings, class bracket) (2021-2025 sold listings)

• The 2024 federal rule setting a six-factor economic-reality test for whether a worker is an employee remains codified at 29 CFR part 795. The wage enforcement agency said on May 1, 2025 that it will no longer apply that rule in investigations, and will enforce under its 2008 fact sheet and a 2019 opinion letter since redesignated. A rule proposed on February 27, 2026, with comments due April 28, 2026, would restore the 2021 rule's analysis with a few modifications.

  Source: Federal Register, proposed rule on employee or contractor status under the FLSA (February 27, 2026)

• Federal projections put employment of delivery truck drivers and driver sales workers up 7% from 2025 to 2035, much faster than average, with about 152,700 openings a year against 1,511,400 jobs and a $43,950 median wage in May 2025. Training runs a month or less, so turnover, not credentialing, is the constraint a buyer inherits.

  Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, delivery truck drivers and driver sales workers (2025-35 projections, May 2025 wages)

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Who Else Is Buying in This Industry

• ADL Final Mile · Omaha, Nebraska

  A final-mile delivery platform buying regional courier and customized-logistics companies to densify a national network, backed by a private equity sponsor that hosts each of its releases.

  • Xcel Delivery Services · 2026 · Arizona and Southwest final-mile courier, the platform's fourth regional purchase.
  • 4 more confirmed on the firm's profile
• Hub Group · Oak Brook, Illinois

  A four-billion-dollar Oak Brook logistics company that buys whole delivery businesses rather than route books, including the residential final mile arm of a listed competitor.

  • SITH, LLC · 2025 · West Coast final mile provider, assets closed September 8, 2025, announced inside an intermodal release; no city printed.
  • 1 more confirmed on the firm's profile

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 manager who runs a fleet or a facility, paid a median of $107,230 a year nationally. Subtract it from SDE before applying any multiple, because at a 3x multiple that wage also takes about $321,690 off what the business is worth to you.

Transportation, storage, and distribution managers, 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

• Driver arrangement, with the paperwork behind each
• Cost per stop rebuilt from settlement statements
• State motor carrier permit, current and in the right entity
• Revenue by account, with the term and notice period on each
• Wage claims, audits, or classification rulings in five years

Where to Go Next

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