Atlanta Freight Brokerage, 25-Year Truckload & LTL Broker

$11.6M

Revenue

$2.2M

SDE

3.7x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a non-asset freight brokerage operating out of Atlanta since 2001. The business arranges truckload, LTL, and expedited shipping nationwide, moving everything from a single skid to a full truckload for shippers in flooring, plastics, metals, and building products. Because it is a broker rather than a carrier, there are no trucks, drivers, or maintenance yards to worry about: the entire model is matching freight to capacity and taking a margin on the spread.

At roughly $11.6M in revenue and $2.15M in cash flow, the company runs at an approximately 18% owner-earnings margin, which is strong for freight brokerage and points to disciplined lane and customer selection rather than chasing volume. It does this with a lean team of just four people plus the owner, which tells you the operation is heavily relationship-driven and dependent on a tight book of accounts.

The standout and the risk are the same number: 20 to 25 active clients with 95% repeat business. That is a sticky, high-retention book that produces predictable freight month after month, but it is also thin concentration. The asking price of $8M at 3.72x cash flow is a full multiple for a business this size, so the deal lives or dies on how transferable those relationships are.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is genuinely attractive for the category: $2.15M cash flow on $11.6M revenue is an approximately 18% margin, well above the mid-single-digit gross margins that plague commodity freight brokers. The 95% repeat-client rate means revenue is not being rebuilt from scratch each quarter, which supports the durability of that earnings stream.
This is a non-asset, capital-light model with no trucks, drivers, or fleet to finance, so free cash flow conversion should be high and maintenance capex near zero. A buyer inherits margin and relationships rather than depreciating steel, which is exactly what you want in a service roll-up.
Freight moves in every economy, and this broker serves boring, essential categories like building products, metals, plastics, and flooring rather than discretionary consumer goods. Volumes flex with cycles but the underlying need to ship industrial materials does not disappear, giving the book real resilience through downturns.
The growth roadmap is unusually clean because the current owner has left the obvious levers untouched. Adding a real sales team, international shipping, reefer capacity, and air freight are all straightforward expansions off an existing operating base and customer trust, meaning an operator with a growth motion can meaningfully outperform the seller.

How to improve it

Attack the customer concentration immediately by building an outbound sales function, because 20 to 25 accounts is dangerously thin for an $8M purchase. Hiring even two or three commissioned brokers with existing shipper relationships could diversify the book within a year and de-risk the single largest threat to the investment.
Systematize the tribal knowledge before the owner walks. Document every account relationship, preferred lane, carrier contact, and pricing rule into a TMS or CRM so the business runs on process rather than on one person's phone contacts, which is essential given the four-person headcount.
Build and lock in a preferred carrier network with volume-based rate agreements to protect and expand the margin spread. Consistent capacity at negotiated rates lets you quote faster, win more freight, and defend gross margin when spot markets tighten.
Layer in the adjacent service lines the seller flagged, starting with international freight forwarding and reefer, and cross-sell them into the existing loyal base. Selling more services to accounts that already trust you is the cheapest revenue you will ever add.
Introduce written volume commitments or shipper agreements where possible to convert informal repeat business into contracted, defensible revenue. Even soft annual commitments improve renewal predictability and materially help the story at your own eventual exit.
Invest in modern freight technology and load-matching tools to lift broker productivity, so each hire can carry more revenue without proportional headcount. Higher revenue-per-employee is the direct path to expanding the approximately 18% margin further.

Diligence notes

Scrutinize customer concentration in detail: pull revenue and gross margin by client for the last three years. With only 20 to 25 accounts, losing the top one or two could erase a large share of the $2.15M cash flow, and you need to price and structure the deal (earnout, holdback) around that risk.
Reconcile the $2.15M cash flow figure to tax returns and bank statements, and confirm exactly what add-backs produced the 'adjusted' number. Freight brokerage margins are thin, so verify the owner add-backs are legitimate and that owner compensation is realistically replaced in the model.
Test relationship transferability with direct conversations with major shippers under NDA. The 95% repeat rate is worthless if that loyalty is personal to the departing owner rather than to the company, so understand who actually owns the relationships.
Clarify the office real estate arrangement, since the facility is a leased office condo owned by the seller. Negotiate a clean, market-rate lease or relocation plan so you are not exposed to an above-market related-party rent after close.
Assess the working capital and cash conversion cycle carefully, because brokers front carrier payments while waiting on shipper receivables. Confirm how much working capital funds the float and whether that is included in the deal, as it directly affects your real all-in cost above the $8M price.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →