Asset-Light Logistics Company, Jacksonville Florida Trucking Broker

$10.0M

Revenue

$1.0M

SDE

7.0x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

High-Profit Asset-Light Logistics Company – Approximately $10M Revenue | Approximately $1M SDE | Jacksonville, Florida Asking Price: $7,000,000 Seller Discretionary Earnings $1,000,000. This is an...

Why we like it

Asset-light logistics throws off cash without the capital drag of owning and maintaining a fleet. A roughly 10 percent net margin on $10M in revenue is healthy for freight, and there is no meaningful depreciation or capex line eating into the SDE. That means the $1M cash flow is closer to real distributable cash than it would be for an owner-operator fleet.
Freight brokerage is genuinely durable. Goods have to move in good times and bad, and an asset-light model can shed carrier capacity when volumes fall rather than eating fixed truck payments. This is the kind of boring, essential function that keeps generating cash through a downturn.
Jacksonville is a real logistics node with port access and I-95 corridor volume. Sitting in that market gives the business consistent freight flow and a recruiting pool of carriers and dispatchers. Location is a structural advantage, not just an incidental detail.
The model scales on relationships and systems, not iron. A buyer who can add sales reps, expand lanes, and tighten carrier margins can grow revenue without a proportional jump in fixed cost. That operating leverage is the whole appeal of asset-light freight.

How to improve it

Map customer concentration in the first 30 days and quantify how much revenue sits in the top five shippers. If one or two accounts drive the business, build a retention plan with contracts or volume commitments before you do anything else. Concentration risk is the single biggest threat to that $1M SDE.
Audit carrier margins lane by lane and identify where you are leaving basis points on the table. Small improvements in buy-sell spread across thousands of loads compound quickly in a $10M book. Tighten pricing discipline on the least profitable lanes first.
Install or upgrade a proper TMS (transportation management system) if the business is running on spreadsheets or manual dispatch. Better load matching, automated tracking, and carrier scorecards reduce labor cost per load and let you scale volume without adding headcount. This is table stakes for a modern brokerage.
Hire or incentivize a dedicated sales function to open new shipper accounts and diversify revenue. Most owner-run brokerages under-invest in outbound sales because the founder is the rainmaker. A commission-driven team de-risks the founder dependency and adds new lanes.
Build a formal carrier onboarding and vetting process to reduce claims, fraud, and service failures. Double-brokering and carrier fraud are rising industry-wide and can wipe out load margins fast. Tight vetting protects both margin and shipper relationships.
Push into higher-margin freight niches like reefer, expedited, or specialized loads where spreads are wider. Commodity dry van freight is a race to the bottom on price. Diversifying into value lanes lifts blended margin without much added overhead.

Diligence notes

Verify the $1M SDE against tax returns and bank statements, and separate true broker margin from any pass-through carrier revenue. In asset-light freight, gross billings can look large while the real economics live in the spread. Confirm you are buying $1M of genuine owner earnings, not gross revenue optics.
Pull customer concentration and cohort retention for at least three years. Freight brokerages often ride one or two anchor shippers, and if those walk after close, the 7x multiple becomes a multiple of nothing. This is the most important number in the deal.
Confirm carrier relationships and whether they transfer. If the seller personally holds the carrier network and shipper trust, quantify how much of the business is founder-dependent and structure an earnout or extended transition around it. No transition terms were disclosed, so this needs to be negotiated hard.
Scrutinize the freight cycle exposure. Rates in 2023-2024 were depressed and the market is only now normalizing, so understand whether the $10M revenue reflects a cyclical peak, trough, or recovery. Buying at the wrong point in the rate cycle changes the whole valuation.
Review the years in business, which the listing lists as unknown, plus any pending freight claims, DOT compliance, and insurance coverage. Contingent liabilities from cargo claims or carrier liability can surface post-close. Nail down operating history and legal exposure before wiring funds.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →