Articles Ranking
Documented exits, ranked by what the seller walked away with
Six sales with a reported price, from $5.8 million down to $60,000, then the three with no price on record and the one deal where the buyer lost everything.
Most writing about unglamorous businesses stops before the sale. The exit ledger on this site exists because the sale is where the money in these companies usually gets realized. This page ranks every sale in the database that has a price on record, largest first, and then lists the ones that do not.
Two things to know before reading the column. First, it counts both kinds of seller: founders in the database who sold, and the people who sold a business to a documented owner. The second group is anonymous in most coverage, but they walked away with a number too. Second, the figure is the reported sale price. It is not what the seller kept. Debt repaid at closing, broker fees, taxes and any earnout all come out of it, and none of the sources report those.
Sold the largest privately owned billboard company in Dallas to Universal Outdoor, now Clear Channel, in 1996. Four months later he bought his first mobile home park for $400,000.
A student-storage company founded at Cornell in 2011, sold to 1-800-PACK-RAT in January 2021. Huber's own figures say $1.65 million and $1.7 million; the Cornell Chronicle says seven figures.
Sold a company doing about $1.2 million in revenue to Nathan Lenahan and partners in 2021, financed with an SBA loan.
A failing store listed on Craigslist, bought in 2010 after 25 banks declined Menz. It became the first of four Queen City Laundry locations.
Menz paid $75,000 for the store and a further $170,000 for its building. After renovation it added $3,000 to $4,000 a month. A fourth store later cost him about $35,000.
Sold to Adam Hill in 2014 because the owner was moving away. Hill now grosses over $58,000 a month from 100-plus machines on that base.
Sold, price not disclosed
Sam Evans, You Call We Haul. Started in 2016 with a $1,000 truck and about $1,700 all-in, sold in September 2024 to a local operator who runs house flips and estate transitions. At its later run rate the company did about $20,000 a month at 65 percent job margins. The price has not been reported.
Johnny Robinson and Sergio Silesky, Orange Window Cleaning. Started in 2017 with $150 of gear at age 19, sold about four and a half years later at a peak of $65,000 to $70,000 a month and more than $1.3 million in cumulative sales. The company still runs above $1 million a year under its new owners. No price has been published.
Gray Brothers, the septic company Dan Spracklin acquired. Founded in 1929 and sold in 2013 by Spracklin's father-in-law, at about $1 million a year in revenue with 22,000 customers. A family transfer, with terms that have not been reported. Spracklin tripled it within two years.
The seller who did well from the one that failed
Dan Burnside bought a rural HVAC company turning $2.1 million with roughly $800,000 of stated owner earnings. The price is not on record. After closing he found the seller had misrepresented the business, a key employee left to start a competitor, and it ended in bankruptcy. The seller kept whatever was paid. His is the only documented failure in the database, and he belongs at the bottom of any list measured this way.
What the order shows
The two biggest sales were by people who then bought assets. Rolfe put his billboard money into a trailer park four months later, and by 2007 had bought and sold 24 parks, earning, he has said, roughly what the billboard sale earned him. Huber and Hagberg rolled Storage Squad into rural self-storage, now 68 facilities. In both cases the sale funded a move from selling a service to owning something that rents. The asset plays and self-storage pages follow that thread.
Most sales went to someone next door. Evans sold to a customer who generates cleanouts. Hill bought from an operator in his own market. Spracklin bought from family. Every buyer on this page was an individual or an adjacent company, and none was a fund, which matches what the exit ledger found.
The small sales built the large businesses. The sellers of an $85,000 laundromat and a $60,000 vending route walked away with modest sums. The buyers turned them into a four-store chain reporting over $2 million a year and a route grossing $58,000 a month. A low price on this list often says more about the seller's situation, a move or a retirement, than about what the business could become. Ten trades ranked by sale multiple gives the market medians to compare against.
The database has the full entries, and the Boring Index scores each trade. If you are on the buying side of a deal like the ones above, buy it or build it covers what the documented buyers learned. This site is one of SideRoad's weekly builds, and the sale table here will grow as more owners disclose prices.
Common questions
What is the largest documented sale in the database?
Frank Rolfe's billboard company, sold to Universal Outdoor, now Clear Channel, for $5.8 million in 1996. Next is Storage Squad, sold by Nick Huber and Dan Hagberg to 1-800-PACK-RAT in January 2021 for a reported $1.65 to $1.7 million.
Is the sale price what the owner takes home?
No. The reported price is the headline figure. Debt repaid at closing, broker fees, taxes and any earnout come out of it, and none of the sources behind this page report those deductions. The exit ledger explains what buyers pay for.
Who buys small service businesses?
In every documented sale here, an individual or an adjacent operator. You Call We Haul went to a local estate-transition operator, Storage Squad to a portable storage company, and the smaller deals to owners who went on to build in the same trade. None went to a fund.
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