# Buying a Dump Truck Business

What aggregate fleets sell for, why public works turns a driver into a prevailing-wage worker, and the seasonal weight limits that shorten the year.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/guides/buying-a-dump-truck-business
Last checked: 2026-10-03

## 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](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/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:

## Financeability Notes

Trucks are the [balance sheet](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/balance-sheet) and they are discounted: half of net book value, or eighty percent with an [orderly liquidation appraisal](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/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](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/qoe) alongside the [valuation](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/valuation), and it asks that report to speak to [customer concentration](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/customer-concentration) and contract continuity, which is exactly where a hauler with two [general contractors](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/general-contractor) is weakest.

## Terms in This Industry

- **Divisible load**: Cargo that can be split between trucks, which is why aggregate gets no overweight permit. States may waive axle and gross limits for a load that cannot be broken up, such as a single piece of machinery. Sand and stone can always be split, so the relief never applies and the legal payload is fixed by the axle configuration on the truck. That makes the fleet spec a revenue ceiling and not a preference, and it is the first thing to check when a seller explains that they could haul more if demand allowed.
- **On-hauling**: California's rule counting on-haul of paving, grading or fill onto a site as prevailing-wage public works. State law can treat that driver as a public works worker and not a haulage line, which means prevailing wage on those hours. It is the single largest reason a seller's driver cost is not the buyer's driver cost on the same jobs: a fleet moving to more public work carries a labor rate set by schedule and not by the market. Establish which jobs qualify before modeling a shift toward municipal customers.
- **Construction hauling broker**: California makes a construction hauling broker pay independent truckers by the twenty fifth each month. Where most revenue arrives through brokers in California, the payment terms are set by statute and not by the invoice. A broker must pay by the twenty-fifth day of the month following the haul when the hauler bills by the fifth, with a penalty of two percent a month on anything improperly withheld. That is a working-capital fact, not a legal footnote, and a model built on thirty-day terms will be wrong by weeks. It also means the customer relationship belongs to the broker and not to the operator.
- **Spring load restrictions**: The dated state weight embargo that cuts legal payload while roads thaw each year. Minnesota's stated intent is that each window last no more than eight weeks, and in 2026 they ran March 3 to April 20 in the Metro and southern zones and March 20 to May 15 in the north. Each start and end date comes with as little as three days' notice. The lost weeks remove real revenue instead of shifting it. A trailing twelve months taken from a strong autumn overstates the run rate, and a business whose customers cannot wait loses the work instead of deferring it. Ask for monthly revenue across three years and read the spring of each one, because the annual figure hides the shape entirely.
- **Carrier number transfer**: Whether the state carrier identifier survives the sale, which it usually does not. Aggregate is nonhazardous and much of this work never crosses a state line, so the federal financial-responsibility rule does not reach an intrastate-only hauler at all and the state fills the gap: California requires the same $750,000 combined single limit inside its own borders. The identifier is the part that surprises buyers. A different legal entity with its own federal tax number needs its own state carrier number, and the number is not transferable from one person to another except to correct the California Highway Patrol's own error in assigning it. An asset purchase therefore runs on the buyer's own number, a new one if the buyer is a new entity.
- **Driver qualification file**: The folder a carrier holds on every driver, and keeps for three years after they leave. 49 CFR 391.51(a) requires each motor carrier to maintain one for each driver it employs. Section 391.51(b) names eight things it holds, among them the employment application, the motor vehicle record pulled at hire, the road test certificate, this year's driving record inquiry and the note reviewing it, and the medical examiner's certificate. The clause a buyer should read twice is 391.51(c), which keeps the file for as long as the driver is employed and for three years thereafter. An asset purchase that leaves the seller's cabinet behind therefore inherits drivers with no provable history, so ask for the files by name and count them against the payroll before closing.
- **Short-haul time record**: The timecard a carrier keeps for six months when its local drivers run no log at all. Driver qualification file is the folder on who a driver is, kept three years after they leave. This is the folder on what a driver did, kept six months, and it fails the same way in an asset purchase. Aggregate hauling is local, so most of these fleets run the 150 air-mile exception and hold no electronic log at all. That is the difference from the device term on the trucking guide: one is about a history nobody can edit, this is about the drivers who have neither. The exception collapses the moment a driver runs past the radius or comes back after fourteen hours. Ask for six months of time records and look for the days that broke either limit, because a fleet that cannot produce them has unpriced driver hours.

## 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. (BizBuySell trucking benchmarks (2021-2025 sold listings, class blend): https://www.bizbuysell.com/learning-center/valuation-benchmarks/trucking-company/)
- 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. (California Labor Code section 1720.3: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=1720.3)
- 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. (23 CFR 658.17, vehicle weight limitations: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-23/part-658/section-658.17)

## 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. Newest here: Troy Ready Mix, Inc. · 2026 · Troy, North Carolina: one ready-mix plant and one pre-cast plant. 12 more confirmed on its profile. (https://searchspheresource.com/buyers/srm-concrete)
- 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. Newest here: Cinderlite Trucking Corporation · 2025 · Founded in 1986, running five aggregate yards and one recycling yard in and around Carson City. (https://searchspheresource.com/buyers/granite-construction)

## What It Costs to Replace the Owner

The multiples are quoted on SDE, which adds the owner's pay back into earnings, so they hold only if you do the owner's job. For this trade the replacement is usually the manager who runs a fleet or a facility, paid a median of $107,230 a year nationally; at a 3x multiple that wage 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 (https://searchspheresource.com/data/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

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