Buying a Machine Shop
The Largest Manufacturing Trade in the Country
Machine shops are the biggest six-digit manufacturing industry in the United States by establishment count: 17,163 of them in the 2022 Economic Census, ahead of commercial printing and well ahead of retail bakeries. What makes the trade unusual is that the size never turned into scale. Those 17,163 establishments belong to 16,876 firms, which is 1.017 locations per firm, so almost every shop in the country is its own company. Average receipts run 2.6 million dollars and average headcount thirteen. A searcher looking for a fragmented trade with a real national population and almost no roll-up already in place is describing this one.
What Machine Shops Trade For
The marketplace's machining and tooling class puts sold-business quartiles at 2.32x to 4.23x SDE from 2021 through 2025, with a median near 3.08 and an average of 3.45, and revenue multiples between 0.53x and 1.12x. The class median sale price is 840 thousand dollars on median revenue of 1.09 million and median owner earnings of 269 thousand, and the median listing took 206 days to sell. The publisher describes the population as ranging from small local machine shops to larger specialized businesses doing CNC work, tool and die, prototype manufacturing and custom fabrication, so the band covers the job shop a searcher is actually looking at.
Two Thirds of Revenue Is Spent Before It Is Earned
The federal cost structure is the reason this trade rewards operators and punishes optimists. Across the class in 2022, receipts of 44.7 billion dollars carried 16.4 billion of supplies and materials and 13.6 billion of payroll. That is 36.6 percent and 30.4 percent, so materials and labor together take 67 percent of every dollar before rent, machines or the owner. A shop quoting from a stale material price is quoting at a loss, and a quote book that has not been repriced since the last steel move is the single most common thing wrong with a shop that looks cheap. Ask what the reprice cadence is and who does it.
One Defense Part and the Shop Is Registered
A shop that has ever made a part on the United States Munitions List is a registered entity, and that registration follows the buyer. 22 CFR 122.4 requires a registrant to notify the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls in writing, signed by a senior officer, within five days of a change in ownership or control. The clause that costs money is 122.4(c)(3): the notification must list the license numbers of all approvals on which unshipped balances will ship under the surviving registration, because any license not named is considered invalid. A foreign buyer has a different clock, sixty days in advance of the transfer.
What to Verify in Diligence
A shop is a quote book, a machine list and a customer concentration problem. Verify:
- Customer concentration by revenue and by gross profit, three years back
- The quote book: when prices were last set, against what material cost, and who reprices
- Machine list with hours, age, and the last service record on each spindle
- Any defense or export work in the shop's history, and the registration it created
- Work in progress against billings, since a full floor is not the same as a paid one
- Programmer and machinist tenure, because the knowledge is in two or three heads
Financeability Notes
Machine shops finance well under SBA 7(a) because the collateral is real and the trade has a deep used market: CNC equipment has a published auction record a lender can check, which is more than most service businesses offer. Expect underwriting to weigh customer concentration hardest, since a shop with one aerospace customer at half of revenue is a single-contract business wearing a manufacturer's clothes. Model debt service against a market wage for a working owner who programs and quotes, because that is the seller's real job, and against a materials line at current prices, not the trailing average.
Terms in This Industry
Quote book
The prices a shop is currently honoring, and the material cost they were set against.
Spindle hours
Machine time actually cut, which is the capacity a shop sells, not the floor it has.
ITAR registration
The defense-trade registration a single munitions-list part obliges a shop to hold.
Unshipped balance
Export approvals with shipments still to run, which must be named at a change of ownership.
Materials share
Supplies and materials as a percentage of receipts, which the federal file publishes for the trade.
What the Data Says
The 2022 Economic Census counts 17,163 machine shop establishments across 16,876 firms, the largest six-digit manufacturing industry in the country by establishment count and almost entirely single-site at 1.017 locations per firm.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 258,700 employees in machine shops as of June 2026, against 226,604 recorded in the 2022 Economic Census.
Source: BLS Current Employment Statistics, machine shops (CEU3133271001)
The SBA size standard for machine shops is a headcount rather than a receipts figure: 500 employees, which almost no shop in the trade approaches.
Enter earnings to apply this industry's cited band.
A sanity check against asking prices, not a valuation.
This industry ranks in the Metro Target Scans for Chicago: strong lending volume and survival on the government's own record.
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 plant supervisor over the machines and the crew, paid a median of $74,450 a year nationally. Subtract it from SDE before applying any multiple, because at a 3x multiple that wage also takes about $223,350 off what the business is worth to you.
First-line supervisors of production and operating 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
- Quote-to-order rate
- Customer concentration by gross profit
- Spindle hours by machine
- Materials as a share of revenue
- Work in progress against billings