Articles Ranking
Ten trades, ranked by what they sell for
One yardstick, the median sale price as a multiple of owner earnings, applied to ten trades and set beside the documented owners in each.
The exit ledger on this site holds three documented sales and a handful of broker listings, which is not enough to rank anything. For a ranking you need one yardstick applied to many deals. BizBuySell publishes one: the median price of businesses sold through its marketplace from 2021 to 2025, divided by the owner's annual earnings, trade by trade. This page puts ten of those medians in order, each beside a documented owner in the same trade.
The figure in the right column is the median earnings multiple. A 3.50 means the typical buyer paid three and a half years of what the business paid its owner. These are BizBuySell's numbers for its own sold listings, reported by brokers and sellers. They are industry medians and do not describe any owner in our database. The trade names are BizBuySell's too, and some are wider than ours.
The only trade here where the median buyer pays more than five years of owner earnings, and about twice annual revenue. John and Tom D'Eri report nearly $6 million a year across three washes.
Median sale price $250,000 across 855 sales. Dave Menz paid $85,000 for his first store, which was failing.
Median sale price $990,000. BizBuySell groups self-storage with portable storage and warehousing. Nick Huber and Dan Hagberg sold Storage Squad for a reported $1.65 to $1.7 million.
Covers junk removal, dumpsters, portable toilets and septic. Median sale price $525,000. Dan Spracklin puts septic at 3 to 6 times EBITDA, a different yardstick.
Median sale price $750,000 on median revenue of about $1.48 million. Nathan Lenahan paid $400,000 for a company with roughly $1.2 million of revenue.
Tied with HVAC on the median, so the order between them means nothing. Median sale price $847,000. Clayton Roll rents equipment alongside dumpsters and containers and has not disclosed figures.
Median sale price $425,000 across 945 sales. Trevor Kokenge reports about 30 percent margins by adding design and construction to maintenance.
The smallest deals on the list: median sale price $83,500. Adam Hill paid $60,000 for his route.
Median sale price $260,000 across 797 sales. Haley Gallagher reported $170,000 in her first full year of commercial cleaning.
Pool service, ATM and delivery routes, 2,914 sales, median sale price $120,000. Joel and Hunter Davis report $851,000 a year from a pool service franchise, which is a larger business than a typical route sale.
Trades priced on a different yardstick
Three trades in the database have a sale figure on record that cannot be put in the column above, because it is measured differently or comes from another source.
Tree service. The benchmark quoted in the exit ledger puts the median at about 3.7 times seller's discretionary earnings. If it came from the same source as the column, it would rank second.
Snow removal. Per-event books trade at 2.5 to 4 times EBITDA and contract-heavy commercial books at 6 to 10 times, per the benchmarks in the exit ledger. The seasonal services page covers why contracted snow work is worth so much more. EBITDA multiples and owner-earnings multiples are different measures and should not be compared directly.
Parking lot striping. One listing: a 34-year-old company asking $300,000 on $267,241 of gross revenue, noted on Luke and Heather Menear's entry. An asking price is a hope, and one listing proves nothing about a trade.
What the order shows
Buyers pay for equipment and real estate that keep earning. The top three are a car wash tunnel, a room of washing machines, and storage units. The bottom of the list is labor: cleaning crews and routes, where what changes hands is a customer list and a schedule.
A high margin does not mean a high multiple. Cleaning sits ninth, yet Cristobal and Sandra Mondragon report 40 to 50 percent margins in the early years of their cleaning company. Car washes top this list at margins the D'Eris report as just above 20 percent. The margin ledger and this page are measuring different things. Work that pays well because the owner is doing it is the hardest kind to hand to someone else.
The range inside a trade is wider than the gap between trades. BizBuySell's middle half of car wash sales runs from 3.20 to 6.70 times earnings, and landscaping from 1.70 to 3.01. Moving from the bottom quarter to the top quarter of your own trade is worth more than switching trades, and the exit ledger's finding on what moves a business up is consistent: contracts, many customers, and a crew that runs without the owner.
The documented buyers paid less than the median. Lenahan's $400,000 for about $1.2 million of revenue is a third of revenue, against a BizBuySell median of 0.56 for HVAC. Menz's $85,000 laundromat and Hill's $60,000 route both came in under their trades' median sale prices. Cheap deals carry their own risk: the Dan Burnside entry is an HVAC purchase with roughly $800,000 of stated owner earnings that ended in bankruptcy after the seller's numbers proved false.
How to use it
If you are buying, the median is where the negotiation starts, and buying against building covers what the documented buyers got for their money. If you are building, the multiple is a number you set years before a sale, by deciding whether revenue is contracted and whether you are still on the truck. The database has the owners, and the startup costs page shows what each trade took to enter.
Common questions
Which small service business sells for the highest multiple?
Of the ten trades ranked here, car washes. BizBuySell's median for car washes sold from 2021 to 2025 is 5.18 times owner earnings, ahead of laundromats at 3.50 and storage and warehouse businesses at 3.36. Routes are lowest at 1.26.
What is an earnings multiple?
The sale price divided by what the business pays its owner in a year, usually called seller's discretionary earnings. A laundromat that sells at the BizBuySell median of 3.50 changed hands for three and a half years of owner earnings. It is a different measure from an EBITDA multiple, and the two should not be compared directly.
Why do cleaning businesses and routes sell for less?
Because the buyer gets a customer list and a schedule instead of equipment or property that keeps earning. BizBuySell's medians are 2.07 times owner earnings for cleaning and janitorial businesses and 1.26 for routes, against 5.18 for car washes.
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