Logistics and Courier Companies for Sale

Every one of the models below gets priced differently, and the terminology matters more than owners expect.

Model	What it's valued on	What can wreck the price
Owner-operated small carrier	Seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), fleet FMV as a cross-check	Owner dependence, deferred capex, spot-market exposure
Managed fleet, dedicated freight	EBITDA after normalizing for market management pay	Customer concentration, driver turnover, safety record
Local courier or final-mile route	SDE or EBITDA; revenue only as a sanity check	Brand approval risk, 1099 driver classification
Freight brokerage / asset-light 3PL	EBITDA; gross profit or net revenue as a secondary metric	Customer portability, key-producer dependence, bad debt
Contract logistics / integrated 3PL	EBITDA, sometimes net revenue	Lease commitments, customer implementation costs

Small US trucking companies sold through BizBuySell between 2021 and 2025 priced between the quartiles at 2.29x to 3.56x SDE, median 2.96x, with a median sold-business SDE of $400,000 and median sale price of $1.138 million. Revenue multiples in the same dataset ran 0.39x to 0.86x. A broader transportation marketplace dataset going back to 2017 shows trucking companies averaging 2.98x cash flow, and delivery routes averaging 1.82x cash flow, though delivery-route revenue accounting differs from carrier accounting and should not be applied across the two.

Courier businesses, per DealStream's directional rules of thumb, run 1.5x to 3.5x SDE or 3x to 6x EBITDA, with a tighter comparable-deal band of 3x to 5x EBITDA. Treat these as directional guidance, not audited closed-sale statistics. As businesses scale past $1 million in normalized EBITDA, private-market ranges widen: managed regional carriers commonly land at 4.5x to 6.5x EBITDA, brokerages and asset-light 3PLs at 4.5x to 7.0x, and scaled platforms above $5 million EBITDA can reach 7x to 10x. These larger-company figures are current-market estimates built from advisor reports and recent transactions, not published closed-deal medians, and should be read that way.

The single largest pricing lever we see, across every model, is customer concentration. A top customer above 20% to 25% of revenue or gross profit typically pulls the multiple down 0.5x to 1.5x EBITDA, or gets routed into an earnout instead of cash at closing. Above 40%, it can block third-party financing entirely. The second lever is fleet condition: deferred replacement capex is deducted from value dollar for dollar once a buyer runs a fleet inspection, so book value on your balance sheet is not the number a buyer underwrites to.

A worked example

A regional dedicated carrier runs $2.4 million in normalized EBITDA after adding back one owner salary above market rate and one-time legal costs. Contracts are assignable, 60% of revenue is dedicated with a working fuel-surcharge mechanism, and no single customer exceeds 18% of revenue. That earns a multiple toward the upper half of the $1 million to $5 million EBITDA band, say 6.0x, for an enterprise value of $14.4 million. From there: add $300,000 of surplus cash not needed for operations, subtract $2.1 million of vehicle debt and finance leases, subtract $400,000 of near-term replacement capex identified in the fleet inspection, and adjust working capital by negative $150,000 to true up receivables and payables to a normal cycle. Estimated cash at closing before fees and taxes: roughly $12.05 million. Note that the operating fleet itself is not added again on top of the EBITDA multiple; it is already inside enterprise value because it is required to generate that EBITDA.

A prepared, marketed sale of a middle-market carrier, courier company, or brokerage runs roughly four to eight months from launch to close: exit readiness and a clean three-year financial model (four to eight weeks), buyer outreach and confidentiality-controlled materials (three to six weeks), management meetings and bids (two to four weeks), LOI (one to two weeks), then confirmatory diligence and quality of earnings (six to ten weeks) running in parallel with financing and definitive documents. Diligence in this vertical goes well beyond financials: buyers pull SAFER and SMS safety scores, inspection and crash history, ELD and Clearinghouse records, five years of insurance loss runs, VIN-level fleet condition, top-25 customer contracts with assignment and change-of-control language, and driver classification support.

Smaller marketplace sales take longer in practice. BizBuySell's current trucking-company dataset shows a 203-day median on market, and its broader transportation guide points sellers toward a realistic six to 12 months. SBA financing, authority transfer, and customer consents are the most common reasons a smaller deal runs past the marketed timeline.

Most small and middle-market trucking and courier sales are structured as asset sales. The IRS treats a lump-sum asset sale as a sale of separate assets, allocated under the Section 1060 residual method, with both parties filing Form 8594. That allocation matters more than owners expect: gain on trucks and equipment up to prior depreciation is generally ordinary income under Section 1245 recapture rules, so a fully depreciated fleet can generate a real ordinary-income tax bill even in a clean sale. Gain allocated to goodwill is typically more favorably taxed for the seller and is amortized by the buyer over 15 years under Section 197.

Stock sales generally give the seller capital-gain treatment and preserve the operating entity, including its USDOT number, but the buyer inherits its tax history, contracts, and safety record with no automatic basis step-up. A Section 338(h)(10) or 336(e) election can, in the right structure, produce asset-style tax treatment inside a stock transaction. C corporations carry a real risk of tax at both the corporate and shareholder level on an asset sale; model the after-tax outcome before you accept a headline number. An installment seller note lets eligible gain get recognized as cash arrives, but depreciation recapture is generally due in the year of sale regardless of when you actually get paid.