Buying a Trucking Company

First, the Authority Question

A carrier runs on federal registrations, and they do not behave like assets. The regulator's own answer is that a USDOT number may not be sold or transferred. What survives a sale therefore depends entirely on structure: buy the shares of the company that holds the number and the number stays, because the company is a separate legal person from its owner; buy the assets into a new entity and that entity applies for its own authority and re-enters eighteen months of new-entrant monitoring. Neither is wrong. The difference is months of runway and a compliance status the seller had already discharged, so settle which one the price assumes before anything else.

Why Searchers Look at Small Carriers

Freight is bought by businesses on standing terms, not by consumers on impulse, the customer list is knowable, and the assets are financeable in a way a service book never is. The trade is also genuinely fragmented and genuinely old: the median driver is closer to retirement than to a first job, and the owner who dispatches, sells and drives is the norm. What a buyer is really acquiring is a lane book and the people who run it. The thesis that works is boring, which is dedicated freight on contract instead of spot loads bought off a board at whatever the week pays.

What Trucking Companies Trade For

Sold trucking companies on the marketplace that publishes them ran 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. Revenue multiples run 0.39x to 0.86x. Read the table and not the page's own summary sentence, which quotes a wider band because it blends asking prices with sold ones. Days on market run to a 203-day median, which is long, and a business at this median carries real equipment and a real driver payroll, not an owner and one truck.

The Safety Record Prices the Insurance

The federal safety system scores two years of roadside inspections and crashes into seven categories and ranks carriers by percentile inside each. A poor score raises the insurance quote and closes shipper doors, and at the extreme it ends the business: a carrier whose proposed unsatisfactory rating becomes final is prohibited from operating and its authority is revoked. Insurance is the cost line that decides most deals at this size, against a federal floor of $750,000 for general freight. The number to get is the seller's own complete profile, because the public view of a freight carrier's percentiles was closed by statute.

What to Verify in Diligence

The record to assemble before the offer holds:

• ✓The seller's complete safety profile, pulled from its own logged-in account
• ✓Current safety rating and any open enforcement, checked at the federal record
• ✓Structure decided: shares with the authority, or assets and a new registration
• ✓Insurance loss runs for three years, with the renewal quote in hand
• ✓Revenue split between contract freight and spot loads
• ✓Driver roster with tenure, pay, and turnover for two years
• ✓Fleet age, maintenance files, and the replacement schedule

Financeability Notes

The loan program names this trade directly: a lender must verify the borrower's USDOT number in the federal safety system, so a suspended registration is a financing problem before it is an operating one. The fleet is collateral and heavily discounted, counted at half of net book value or eighty percent with an orderly liquidation appraisal, which is worth commissioning when trucks are most of the balance sheet. Vehicles under twenty thousand dollars need no lien at all. Service bays, truck washing or fuel tanks put the trade on the environmental investigation list, so an owned yard adds a step.

Terms in This Industry

What the Data Says

• Trucking companies sold on BizBuySell from 2021 through 2025 changed hands between 2.29x and 3.56x SDE, with a 2.96x median and a 3.00x average, on a $1,137,500 median sale price, $1,954,881 of median revenue and $400,000 of median owner earnings, with revenue multiples of 0.39x to 0.86x. The same page's summary sentence quotes 2.35x to 3.75x, which blends asking prices into the band; the sold table is the one to read.

  Source: BizBuySell trucking benchmarks (sold listings, 2021-2025)

• The federal regulator states that USDOT numbers are not transferable, and that where a corporation is sold the number goes with the corporation because it is a separate legal person from its owner. A new entity formed to buy the assets must apply for its own operating authority and is monitored through an initial eighteen-month new-entrant period.

  Source: FMCSA, registration and operating authority guidance

• Federal projections put employment of heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers up 4% from 2024 to 2034 with about 237,600 openings a year against 2,235,100 jobs, at a $57,440 median wage in 2024. Almost all of those openings replace people leaving the occupation, which is the shape of the constraint a buyer inherits.

  Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers

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

• Kenan Advantage Group · North Canton, Ohio

  North America's largest tank truck and dry bulk carrier, which grows by buying regional liquid and dry bulk haulers and folding their terminals into its own network.

  • Fisher Transport · 2025 · Nova Scotia liquid bulk hauler moving raw milk, the firm's Canadian arm buying locally.
  • 3 more confirmed on the firm's profile
• Heniff Transportation Systems · Oak Brook, Illinois

  A bulk chemical and food-grade tank truck operator that buys regional tank carriers and tank-wash operations into what it calls its family of companies, naming each seller on its own newsroom.

  • TechnoPort · 2024 · Netherlands ISO tank services provider, the firm's move outside North America.
  • 2 more confirmed on the firm's profile
• Alterna Equity Partners · Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  A South Florida lower-middle-market private equity firm whose transportation platform hauls waste, aggregates and construction debris long-haul, built by buying family-owned carriers and adding to them.

  • Attaway Hauling and Choice Bulk Carriers · 2023 · Gordon, Georgia long-haul waste transport and regional bulk carrier, about 200 trucks combined.
  • 1 more confirmed on the firm's profile

Buyers profiles every confirmed firm across all trades.

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

• Contract freight share against spot loads off a board
• Safety percentiles, from the seller's own logged-in profile
• Insurance loss runs and the renewal quote in hand
• Driver tenure, pay, and two years of turnover
• Fleet age against the replacement schedule

Where to Go Next

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