Buying a Dump Truck Business
First, Whether the Work Is Public
A hauling business is priced on its driver cost, and public work changes that cost by rule and not by negotiation. California law counts hauling refuse off a public works site as public works, and on-hauling paving, grading and fill onto one too where the driver's work is integrated into the construction flow, which brings prevailing wage with it. The federal rule reaches on-site time too, counting a driver's loading and waiting at the site where it is more than trivial. So the first question about a job list is which jobs are public, because that answer sets the labor rate on them.
Why Searchers Look at Aggregate Hauling
The customer is a contractor or a quarry with a schedule, the work is local, and the assets are financeable in a way service books never are. Demand follows construction, not consumers, which is a cycle a buyer can read in advance instead of a taste that shifts. The operators are small and equipment-heavy, and the constraint is drivers holding a commercial license, which it shares with long-haul trucking and not with a courier's vans. What a buyer acquires is a fleet, a job list, and the relationships that keep the trucks loaded.
What Hauling Businesses Trade For
Aggregate hauling has no benchmark page of its own. The nearest class is trucking companies, which the publisher describes as general and specialized freight operations, and those sold between 2.29x and 3.56x SDE across 2021 to 2025, with a 2.96x median, on a $1,137,500 median sale price and $400,000 of median owner earnings. Read the table instead of the page's summary sentence, which quotes a band neither of its quartile tables prints. A hauling fleet sits inside that class and not beside it, so treat the band as the shape and not as a comp.
The Year Is Shorter Than the Trailing Twelve Months
Two things compress the calendar. Federal weight law caps a vehicle at eighty thousand pounds gross, twenty thousand on a single axle and thirty-four thousand on a tandem, and aggregate is a divisible load, so the overweight permits that rescue heavy machinery do not apply to it. Then states embargo weight while roads thaw: Minnesota's stated intent is no more than eight weeks of spring restrictions, and it announces each start and end date with as little as three days' notice. Diesel is the other line, and it swings by region far more than by month, which is why a bid priced in one state does not travel.
What to Verify in Diligence
The record to assemble before the offer holds:
- Job list split into public and private work, with the wage rate on each
- Monthly revenue across three years, read for the spring of each one
- Revenue arriving through brokers, with the payment terms actually experienced
- Fleet configuration against legal payload, axle by axle
- State hauling permits and any public works contractor registration
- Driver roster with commercial licenses, tenure, and turnover
Financeability Notes
Trucks are the balance sheet and they are discounted: half of net book value, or eighty percent with an orderly liquidation appraisal, which is worth commissioning at this asset weight. Size eligibility runs to thirty-four million dollars of receipts for local specialized freight. 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 and contract continuity, which is exactly where a hauler with two general contractors is weakest.
Terms in This Industry
Divisible load
Cargo that can be split between trucks, which is why aggregate gets no overweight permit.
On-hauling
California's rule counting on-haul of paving, grading or fill onto a site as prevailing-wage public works.
Construction hauling broker
California makes a construction hauling broker pay independent truckers by the twenty fifth each month.
Spring load restrictions
The dated state weight embargo that cuts legal payload while roads thaw each year.
Carrier number transfer
Whether the state carrier identifier survives the sale, which it usually does not.
Driver qualification file
The folder a carrier holds on every driver, and keeps for three years after they leave.
Short-haul time record
The timecard a carrier keeps for six months when its local drivers run no log at all.
What the Data Says
Aggregate hauling has no benchmark page of its own. The nearest class the publisher breaks out is trucking companies, described in its own words as general trucking, specialized transportation logistics and line-haul operations. Those sold between 2.29x and 3.56x SDE across 2021 to 2025, with a 2.96x median, on a $1,137,500 median sale price and $400,000 of median owner earnings. The page's own summary sentence quotes a band neither of its quartile tables prints.
Source: BizBuySell trucking benchmarks (2021-2025 sold listings, class blend)
California law defines public works to include hauling refuse from a public works site to an outside disposal location. It also includes the on hauling of materials used for paving, grading and fill onto one, but only if the individual driver's work is integrated into the flow process of construction. It names soil, sand, gravel, rocks, concrete, asphalt, excavation materials and construction debris among the refuse it covers.
Federal weight law caps gross vehicle weight at 80,000 pounds except where the bridge formula dictates lower, with 20,000 pounds on any one axle and 34,000 on a tandem. States may issue special permits without regard to those limits only for nondivisible loads, and aggregate is divisible, so that relief does not reach this trade.
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 this industry preselected and its cited band loaded.
Compare bands across industries in the cited multiple bands by industry.
Who Else Is Buying in This Industry
- SRM Concrete · Smyrna, Tennessee
The largest privately owned ready-mix concrete producer in the United States, which buys the hauling companies that move its materials as well as the plants that make them.
- Troy Ready Mix, Inc. · 2026 · Troy, North Carolina: one ready-mix plant and one pre-cast plant.
- 12 more confirmed on the firm's profile
- Granite Construction · Watsonville, California
A hundred-year-old California construction materials company that buys the trucking and aggregate businesses feeding its own plants, which is how a hauler in this trade usually exits.
- Cinderlite Trucking Corporation · 2025 · Founded in 1986, running five aggregate yards and one recycling yard in and around Carson City.
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
- Job list split public and private, with the wage rate on each
- Monthly revenue across three years, read for each spring
- Broker-sourced revenue, and the payment terms actually experienced
- Fleet configuration against legal payload, axle by axle
- State hauling permits and public works registration