This septic pumping and portable toilet business out of Maine throws off serious cash flow.
It is listed at $4.5 million with about $903K in seller earnings.
When we run it through the BizHub calculator using standard SBA terms, the buyer is left with roughly $242K a year after debt payments.
That is still decent money - but the financing burden here is enormous.
Operationally, this is actually a pretty durable business.
It has been operating since 2002 and has multiple recurring revenue streams tied to essential services.
The company handles portable toilet rentals, septic pumping, septic system maintenance, gravel sales, and even operates self-storage units.
That diversification matters because buyers are not relying on a single revenue source.
The listing also includes a substantial equipment base with septic trucks, portable toilet trucks, heavy equipment, trailers, storage units, and service vehicles already included.
And the margins are legitimately strong.
At nearly 53%, this business is running far more profitably than the average service company.
This deal is expensive.
The asking price works out to nearly a 5x cash flow multiple in an industry where businesses like this often trade much lower.
And the listing gets even more aggressive once you realize the real estate is NOT included in the asking price.
They want approximately another $1 million for the 30 acres separately.
That means the actual total acquisition cost for someone buying the entire operation is meaningfully higher than the headline business price.
The SBA guarantee fee alone is over $114K.
And despite the strong earnings, the DSCR only lands around 1.4 because the debt load is massive.
That leaves buyers with much less room for operational mistakes than the raw cash flow number suggests.
A $55K monthly loan payment sounds fine until equipment breaks, fuel spikes, drivers quit, or demand softens seasonally.
Another thing buyers need to pay attention to is the ownership transition.
This business has been operated by a husband-and-wife team since inception.
The wife handles office operations and dispatching. The husband oversees field operations and customer service.
The wife wants to retire completely, and while the husband may stay temporarily, he does not want a management role.
That creates a real operational gap buyers need to solve.
In local environmental service businesses like this, relationships, dispatching knowledge, scheduling, and operational coordination are often deeply tied to the owners.
Replacing that institutional knowledge is not always easy.
The BizHub score lands around a 6.2 out of 10.
This is a strong underlying business with recurring demand, real assets, diversified revenue streams, and excellent margins.
But buyers are paying a serious premium for it.
And once you layer in the real estate purchase, high SBA fees, large debt payments, and management transition risk, the margin for error gets a lot thinner than the headline cash flow suggests.
Good business. Expensive deal.
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