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Project Silvered Leviathan is a scaled waste and bulk materials transportation company running across New York, Massachusetts, and Maine. Founded in 2010, the business hauls municipal solid waste, construction and demolition debris, sludge, recycling, and other bulk commodities across more than 80 active and projected lanes. With 111 employees covering drivers, mechanics, supervisors, and office staff, this is a mature regional platform, not a startup, doing roughly $28.6M in revenue and $2.68M in seller cash flow.
The asset base is the story here. The company owns approximately 51 tractors (mostly 2019 to 2021 Kenworth and Western Star units), over 260 trailers of varied specification, plus wheel loaders, excavators, and backhoes. It also owns all of its real estate, including a 10-acre transfer station and garage in Canaan NY, a corporate HQ and maintenance facility in Jordan NY, a 125-acre truck terminal in Plymouth ME, and a yard waste processing facility in Marston Mills MA. Fixed infrastructure includes a 140,000-lb truck scale and 32,000 gallons of on-site fuel storage. Real estate is valued at $2M and included in the $15M ask.
The business serves municipalities, counties, national waste companies, and private transfer stations, with several key contracts extending through mid-2027 for near-term revenue visibility. This is positioned squarely at a PE platform or strategic acquirer looking to build density in the consolidating Northeast waste corridor. The moat is real: owned permitted infrastructure, a specialized fleet, and entrenched contracts are hard to replicate.
Why we like it
- Earnings quality is anchored to essential, non-discretionary demand: municipalities and counties do not stop collecting trash in a recession. Several key contracts extend through mid-2027, giving genuine revenue visibility, and fuel surcharge plus disposal fees provide contractual cost pass-throughs that protect margin.
- The moat is physical and permitted, not brand-based. Owned transfer stations, a 140,000-lb scale, on-site fuel storage, and a specialized fleet of 51 tractors and 260-plus trailers create high barriers to entry that support route density and customer retention once established.
- Waste hauling in the Northeast is a consolidating, fragmented market, which is exactly the setup a buyer wants. The existing dispatch, compliance, and driver infrastructure can absorb tuck-in acquisitions with limited G&A growth, turning this into a roll-up base rather than a single asset.
- The multi-state footprint (NY, MA, ME) with owned facilities and long-standing municipal relationships gives an operator real leverage. Route densification and repricing of long-tenured underpriced accounts are near-term margin levers that require operational focus, not capital.
How to improve it
- Audit every account for fuel-surcharge coverage and extend it to the remaining customers. The listing flags that not all accounts carry surcharge protection, so closing that gap is a direct, high-confidence margin recovery with no new revenue required.
- Reprice long-tenured underpriced accounts as contracts come up for renewal. Municipal relationships that have gone years without a rate reset are the easiest source of pure gross-margin dollars, especially where switching costs and permitted infrastructure make you hard to displace.
- Attack fleet utilization and cost-per-stop through route densification within the existing NY/MA/ME corridor. With 81-plus lanes and 51 tractors, small improvements in truck utilization drop straight to cash flow without proportional headcount growth.
- Build a disciplined tuck-in acquisition pipeline of smaller regional haulers. The existing compliance, dispatch, and maintenance backbone means you can integrate competitors and strip their G&A, and roll-ups in fragmented waste markets are how you compound the entry multiple down.
- Pursue additional municipal and institutional contracts to add multi-year, high-predictability revenue. These are sticky, RFP-driven, and reward the operator with permitted infrastructure and a track record, which this business already has.
- Expand into adjacent regulated waste streams such as electronics recycling and other permitted materials. The listing calls these genuine white space, and they typically carry higher margins than commodity MSW hauling.
- Tighten maintenance and capex planning across the aging portion of the fleet. With owned scale and maintenance facilities, in-house cost control on a 51-tractor, 260-trailer fleet is a meaningful lever, and disciplined replacement timing prevents surprise capex from eating the SDE.
Diligence notes
- Reconcile the EBITDA of $1.76M against the stated cash flow (SDE) of $2.68M on a $15M ask. At 5.6x cash flow the multiple looks reasonable, but this is an asset-heavy business, so scrutinize maintenance capex and fleet replacement schedules to understand true owner earnings after keeping the fleet current.
- Pull the customer contract file and quantify concentration. Contracts extending through mid-2027 are a plus, but confirm how much revenue those key accounts represent, their renewal terms, and what share comes from municipalities versus national waste companies who could in-source or renegotiate.
- Verify all permits, transfer station licenses, and environmental compliance across the four owned facilities in NY, MA, and ME. Permitted infrastructure is the moat, so any lapsed permit, environmental liability, or contamination issue on the 125-acre terminal or transfer stations is a direct hit to value.
- Assess the fleet age and condition honestly. Tractors are 2019 to 2021 with only one 2024 unit added, so a large replacement cliff may be approaching. Get an independent fleet appraisal and map expected replacement capex over the first three years of ownership.
- Confirm the revenue figure and the gap between trailing $28.6M and the projected $29.4M to $30.6M. Projected lanes are not the same as active lanes, so separate contracted, in-service revenue from projections to avoid paying for growth that has not materialized.
- Examine driver retention, wage rates, and CDL staffing given the 111-employee base. Waste hauling lives and dies on driver availability, so turnover, open positions, and dependence on any single supervisor or dispatcher are critical operational risks to size before close.
Source
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