Sell My Transportation Business: Industry Outlook, Do’s and Don’ts, and FAQs

Selling your transportation business is a complex financial transaction, where errors can lead to valuation misalignments and deals that don’t close. The process involves exit preparation, transition planning, conducting nuanced valuations, evaluating and disqualifying buyers, keeping a clear head during negotiation, and structuring the deal.

But when done correctly, selling your business can help you finance the next stage of your life, give you the exit timeline you want, and put your business in good hands.

This guide is designed for owners of small to midsize transportation businesses (typically $1M+ EBITDA) who are serious about selling their companies and want to maximize their exit outcomes.

Whether you’re considering a sale due to retirement, new opportunities, health changes, or shifting priorities, the strategies in this guide can help you avoid common pitfalls and achieve better results in terms of sale price, timeline, and stewardship.

Our guide covers:

• The do’s and don’ts of selling your transportation business.
  This includes why you shouldn’t accept an unsolicited offer and how to maximize your exit outcomes.
• Preparing your business for exit.
  This includes eliminating key person dependencies, setting up a data room for critical documents, and knowing what you need from your exit.
• FAQs about selling a transportation business:
  • What is the average EBITDA multiple for transportation companies?
  • How should I value my transportation business?
  • When is the right time to sell my transportation business?
  • How long does it take to sell a business?
  • What are the unique challenges of selling a transportation business?

But first, let’s look at the M&A outlook for the transportation industry.

Transportation Industry Outlook and M&A Implications

The 2025 Tenney Group M&A report found that transportation M&A activity surged 159% to $90.5 billion in 2024 compared to $35 billion in 2023, signaling strong buyer interest across all transportation sectors.

Dinan M&A Advisors reported that “global transaction volume in the Transportation and Logistics industry held firm in early 2025, despite macroeconomic pressures, shifting policy environments, and geopolitical uncertainty.”

Whether you operate a logistics company, aviation services, ground transportation, freight forwarding, or specialized transportation business, this increased activity can help lead to better exit outcomes in terms of final sale price, exit timeline, and stewardship.

Market Recovery Creating Opportunities

The transportation industry is emerging from a prolonged freight recession that began in 2022, characterized by depressed freight rates, excess capacity, and elevated operating costs that stressed businesses for over three years. While market conditions varied across transportation sectors, the broader downturn created challenges for valuations and exit timing.

Several factors suggest improving conditions for transportation M&A. The freight recession is officially declared over by many analysts, capacity is reducing as weaker players exit the market, strategic buyers have cash reserves ready to deploy, and private equity firms are targeting transportation for consolidation opportunities.

These improving market conditions benefit transportation business owners considering exits, particularly those who successfully navigated the recent downturn and are positioned for growth as freight markets recover.

Trends Affecting Transportation Valuations

Technology integration commands premium valuations as buyers seek companies with digital capabilities, automated systems, and advanced tracking technology. Transportation businesses that have invested in operational technology are seeing higher multiples than traditional asset-heavy competitors.

Sustainability focus attracts buyer interest in green transportation solutions, electric fleets, and carbon-efficient operations.

• Nearshoring trends benefit domestic transportation as companies relocate supply chains closer to home markets.
• E-commerce growth continues driving demand for last-mile delivery and specialized services, with these segments commanding higher multiples than traditional freight.

Recent Transportation Companies that Have Reached Out to Axial about Selling

• 3PL Container Logistics Specialist: A niche logistics business specializing in container segment (drayage) operations with $800K EBITDA on $3.5M revenue, demonstrating the strong margins possible in specialized freight services.
• Luxury Transportation & NEMT Provider: A Florida-based company offering luxury transportation, shuttle services, and non-emergency medical transportation with $600K EBITDA on $4M revenue. Recently added larger vehicles and expanded into NEMT to meet growing medical transportation demand.
• Regional Freight & Alaska Operations: A 21-year-old freight operations business serving Western Alaska with oversized cargo, including mobile homes, vehicles, and containers. Owns $15M in land and marine assets with $2M EBITDA on $7M revenue, showcasing the asset-heavy model in specialized freight.
• Technology-Enabled Logistics Platform: A company operating at the intersection of logistics and fintech, providing freight brokerage, dispatching, and 3PL services through their automation platform. Generates $3.5M EBITDA on $12M revenue, representing the higher multiples commanded by technology-integrated transportation businesses.
• Global Transportation & Logistics Conglomerate: A 22-year-old company offering comprehensive supply chain solutions across 185+ countries, including air, ocean, ground transportation, and warehousing, serving Fortune 100 clients with $1.3M EBITDA on $12.5M revenue.

If you’re interested in selling your transportation business, schedule your free exit consultation.

How to Sell Your Transportation Business: Do’s and Don’ts

Don’t Accept Unsolicited Offers

An unsolicited offer is unlikely to be the best offer you’ll get. Plenty of business owners start thinking about selling when they get such offers, but there are two things to consider here.

1. You can’t tell if the offer is fair. The value of your business looks different from the perspective of potential buyers. So while you may think the unsolicited offer’s valuation matches with your understanding of your business, other buyers may see significantly more value in your operations than the unsolicited buyer. Without market context, you have no way to know if you’re leaving money on the table.
2. You can potentially get a more premium offer by targeting more buyers. Skilled M&A advisors can market your business to their extensive buyer networks, creating a competitive bidding process where multiple buyers are interested in your company. Data shows that working with an M&A advisor can increase the final sale price by up to 25%.

But it isn’t just a higher price that you may get through this process. By creating a competitive bidding process, you can maximize your exit outcomes, which means: a higher price and finding a better steward for your business.

Do: Partner with an M&A Advisor

Working with an M&A advisor can help you sell your business successfully. Advisors can:

• Make sure your business is prepared for its exit, ensuring buyer-ready financials, organized documentation, and buyer-ready presentation materials.
• Strategically advise you on the best time to sell your business based on industry cycles and market conditions.
• Accurately value your business using industry-specific methodologies and recent transaction data.
• Market your business for you and significantly increase your buyer coverage through their established networks of buyers who have made similar acquisitions in the past.
• Evaluate buyers on your behalf, disqualifying tire-kickers and ensuring serious parties have the financial backing to close.
• Negotiate on your behalf with a clear head, helping structure optimal deals and navigate complex terms like earnouts and asset valuations.

Plus, Make Sure You Find the Right Advisor for Your Business

But not all M&A advisors are created equal. You want an advisor with recent and relevant deal experience in your industry.

Transportation businesses require specialized knowledge that generic advisors often lack. The kind of advisor you want depends on your business type. For example, you may benefit the most with an advisor who understands freight cycles and market timing, maintains relationships with transportation-focused buyers (strategic acquirers, PE consolidators, logistics technology companies), and has experience with the asset valuation complexities central to transportation deals.

Specialized transportation advisors provide crucial advantages: broader buyer coverage creating competitive bidding environments, deep industry relationships with both strategic and financial buyers, and the ability to time exits around freight cycles to maximize valuations.

At Axial, we maintain a network of over 3,000 M&A advisors with detailed performance data on their deals, buyer coverage, and success rates. We hand-curate shortlists of 3-5 advisors specifically matched to your transportation business and exit goals.

Ready to sell? Start the process today.

We also have additional resources about M&A advisors, including:

• How to Find the Best M&A Advisor to Sell Your Business
• Business Brokers vs M&A Advisors

Don’t: Limit Yourself to One Type of Buyer

There are two main types of buyers for your transportation business: strategic buyers and financial buyers.

Strategic buyers want to acquire your business to help grow their own company. These could be:

• Larger transportation companies that are looking to expand into your geographic area, grow their customer base, or add capacity. For example, if you run a ground transportation firm with corporate clients, regional competitors might want to acquire you to expand their client roster.
• Logistics consolidators who are building integrated supply chain solutions. If you offer specialized services that complement their existing operations, you could be an attractive acquisition target.

Financial buyers include:

• Private equity firms that are actively seeking transportation businesses for consolidation and roll-up strategies. They typically buy a “platform” company and then use it to acquire additional transportation businesses.
• Family offices looking for long-term investments in stable transportation businesses. If you have an asset-heavy business like aviation MRO services, family offices often find these attractive.
• Individual investors who want to buy and operate transportation companies, especially smaller, owner-operated businesses.

But overall, buyers exist on a spectrum between offering premium prices (but less stewardship) versus better stewardship (but lower prices).

As a business owner, you probably want the best possible price while ensuring your company goes to someone who will:

• Help grow your business (especially important if you’re retaining ownership or have earnouts)
• Keep your business intact rather than breaking it apart
• Retain your employees through the transition

You’ll have your own priorities here. If you need to maximize sale price above all else — maybe to fund retirement — you might accept a buyer who absorbs your business into theirs, even if that means your company ceases to exist independently.

That’s why the best approach isn’t targeting just one type of buyer. Instead, you want to reach as many qualified buyers as possible to create competition for your business.

Here are some additional resources on understanding buyer profiles:

• Strategic Buyers vs. Financial Buyers
• How to Find a Buyer for Your Business
• Selling to Private Equity Firms

Do: Get Your Business Valued Before Going to Market

You want to get your transportation business valued early and often, as it can help you see if you’re on the roadmap to hitting your exit goals.

But transportation valuations present unique challenges that require industry-specific expertise. Key valuation drivers that transportation advisors understand include the contract versus spot market revenue mix (contract revenue provides more stable valuations), customer diversification and retention rates, asset utilization rates and equipment condition, geographic coverage and market positioning, technology adoption and operational efficiency, and regulatory compliance history. Additionally, these valuation factors need to be understood within the context of what a buyer is willing to pay.

For example:

• The cyclical nature of freight markets requires normalized EBITDA calculations that account for where the business sits in the freight cycle. A container drayage operation generating $3.5 million in revenue with $800,000 in EBITDA, for example, needs valuation analysis that considers whether current earnings reflect normal market conditions or are suppressed due to recent freight market challenges.
• Asset valuations are critical given the equipment-heavy nature of many transportation businesses. A Seattle-based freight operations company with $7 million in revenue and $2 million in EBITDA that owns $15 million in land and marine assets requires sophisticated analysis to determine how much of the value comes from operating earnings versus underlying assets.

Because of such factors, EBITDA multiples for transportation businesses can vary significantly.

For example, the Winning LOI hub shows:

• A private equity fund submitted an offer for a transportation business at 4.93x $441k in EBITDA.
• An independent sponsor submitted an offer for 8.84x $9.6m in EBITDA.
• A family office submitted an offer for 5.39x $834k in EBITDA.

Another way to understand this drastic spread in multiples is that EBITDA transportation businesses can be divided into distinct camps in terms of the risk an investment poses to a new owner.

On the one hand, some businesses have strong recurring revenue, low capital expenditure, and high operational efficiency. These businesses are attractive because they promise stable cash flow and low reinvestment for the buyer. Some businesses may achieve an extremely high EBITDA multiple if their service is also strongly differentiated or the company has strategic dominance.

On the other hand, transportation can also be a very volatile sector. Take the trucking industry, which is heavily impacted by fuel prices and regulatory pressures. Some businesses are also dependent on cyclical demand, or they have heavy asset requirements that need a high level of ongoing investment. The EBITDA multiple for these businesses tends to be much lower.

To get an accurate valuation range of your business, schedule your free Exit Consultation with Axial. We will learn about your business and then pair you with an M&A advisor who can most accurately value your transportation business.

Here are some additional resources on business valuation:

• How to Value a Company for Sale
• Free Business Valuation Calculator

Preparing Your Transportation Business for Sale

Know Your Exit Goals

One of the main reasons why deals can fall through is the business owner having unrealistic or unclear expectations. You don’t want to go to market unsure of what your value is or what you want from your exit in terms of sale price, exit timeline, and stewardship.

Here are some questions business owners should know the answer to:

• What do I need financially to support myself and my loved ones after my exit? Knowing your number helps you decide if it’s the right time to sell. If your advisor’s valuation range doesn’t match your ideal sale price, then the advisor can recommend what changes you can implement to maximize value.
• What will I do with my free time after I sell my business? You likely had a busy load running your transportation business. How will you fill the time after your exit? How will this affect your loved ones?
• How long do I want to stay on after the sale? Most exits will require a transition period, where the owner stays on for a few months to assist with the exchange of control.
• What do I want to happen to my company, its employees, and current customers? There’s often a spectrum between price and stewardship, where the more you get of one, the less you get of the other. You may entertain very different offers if you’re willing to let a competitor absorb your transportation company.

At Axial, we recommend that you prioritize your motivations for selling. For example, if your main motivation is financial, such as funding your retirement and making sure your children are financially independent, you may be willing to sacrifice on things like exit timeline and stewardship if it brings you a more premium sale price.

Create a Data Room with Key Documents and Financials

As buyers become interested in your business, they’ll start to ask to see more information regarding your management structure, operations, financials, etc. And when a Letter of Intent (LOI) is executed, your potential buyer will perform due diligence.

So while you don’t necessarily need to have all your documents ready to go at the beginning of the process, being prepared to exit does help make the exit smoother.

Here’s a list of “nice to have” documents that you can store in a data room. Data rooms are virtual and secure ways to share important documents. We recommend using a data room, as it’s more efficient, especially if you need to update your documents throughout the process.

Key documents to include in your data room:

• Financial records: 3+ years of P&L statements, balance sheets, tax returns, and cash flow statements
• Equipment & asset documentation: Fleet lists, equipment valuations, maintenance records, and lease agreements
• Operational documents: Customer contracts, supplier agreements, insurance policies, and safety records
• Legal & compliance: Business licenses, DOT certifications, permits, and regulatory compliance documentation
• HR & employment: Employee contracts, org charts, benefit plans, and union agreements (if applicable)
• Technology & systems: Software licenses, technology infrastructure documentation, and data security protocols

Optimizing Your Business for Maximum Value

Before going to market, there are things you can do to increase your company’s value further.

Strengthen Your Financial Systems

Many transportation businesses operate on basic “cash in, cash out” accounting that buyers find insufficient for due diligence. To present your financials professionally, you can:

• Switch to accrual-based accounting that records revenue when services are performed (not just when payments are received)
• Normalize your earnings to account for industry cycles (freight rates, seasonal passenger demand, fuel costs) and one-time expenses
• Get accurate asset appraisals for your equipment and document maintenance records
• Separate any personal expenses from business operations

Reduce Key Person Dependencies

Transportation businesses are often heavily dependent on their owners. You’ll want to show buyers that your business can operate without you by:

• Creating standard operating procedures for dispatch, maintenance, and compliance
• Developing your management team to handle day-to-day operations
• Ensuring customer relationships can transfer smoothly to new ownership
• Implementing driver retention programs (stable workforces are critical for buyer confidence)

Strengthen Your Market Position

You can make your business more appealing by improving its competitive positioning:

• Diversify your customer base to reduce concentration risk with any single client
• Increase contract freight when possible to move away from volatile spot markets
• Invest in technology like TMS systems, tracking, and compliance tools
• Maintain excellent safety ratings and regulatory compliance records

These improvements not only make your business more attractive to buyers but can also increase your valuation and make the due diligence process smoother.

For more information, you can read our guide on maximizing business value.

Next Steps: Finding the Right M&A Advisor for Your Transportation Business

Throughout this post, we covered the do’s and don’ts of selling your transportation business, the importance of exit planning, and how an M&A advisor can help you achieve your ideal exit. A key part of navigating this process successfully is to partner with an M&A advisor.

At Axial, we specialize in helping small-to-midsize business owners find the best advisor who can bring them these results.

Here are two examples of transportation companies that have reached out to find the best advisor for their exit:

• An Aviation MRO Services Provider: A specialized aviation business providing maintenance, repair, and overhaul services, including storage, preservation, parts sales, paint, and C-checks, generating $3M EBITDA on $15M revenue. This demonstrates the strong margins achievable in specialized aviation services.
• An International Freight Forwarding Company: A global freight forwarding operation handling international shipments with $2.76M EBITDA on $36M revenue, showcasing how established international logistics companies can achieve solid profitability in the complex world of cross-border transportation.

We start by pairing you with an Exit Consultant who gets to know your business and your exit goals.

Your Exit Consultant will leverage Axial’s network of 3,000+ M&A advisors to create a shortlist of candidates with:

• Recent, relevant deal experience in the transportation industry.
• Track record of advancing prospective buyers from initial interest to submitted bids.
• Strong down-funnel success, including the number of bids generated and successful sales completed within the Axial network.
• Positive feedback on professionalism, reputation, and responsiveness.

We’ll send you a curated list of 3–5 qualified transportation industry advisors, complete with detailed insights to help you evaluate your options and resources to prepare for meetings with your candidates.

Schedule your free exit consultation today.

FAQs

What Are Average EBITDA Multiples for Transportation Companies?

EBITDA multiples vary significantly by transportation subsector and business characteristics. Based on our internal data of transportation listed within Axial’s platforms, transportation companies have a range of EBITDA multiples between 2.2 and 16.2, with a median of approximately 9x.

These multiples are influenced by recurring revenue, capital expenditures, operational efficiency, and the industry your company operates in.

How Should I Value My Transportation Business?

You will use several different valuation methods to value your business, including:

• DCF analysis that accounts for freight cycles, seasonal demand patterns, and the cyclical nature of transportation earnings
• Comparable company analysis that looks at public transportation companies’ trading multiples, adjusted for size differences between public and private companies
• Precedent transaction analysis that examines recent transportation M&A deals in your specific subsector (trucking, 3PL, aviation, etc.)
• Asset-based valuation for equipment-heavy businesses where fleet values, real estate, and specialized equipment significantly contribute to total enterprise value

Using these methods together, you can triangulate an accurate valuation range that reflects both your operational performance and underlying asset values.

When is the Right Time to Sell My Transportation Business?

Several factors influence optimal timing for transportation business sales. The current post-recession recovery environment may be the best time to sell your business as freight markets stabilize and improve.

Selling from a position of financial strength rather than distress always produces better outcomes. The current market consolidation trend means buyers are actively seeking transportation acquisitions. Personal readiness for transition is equally important; owners should ensure they’re prepared for the emotional and practical aspects of selling their business.

How Long Does It Take to Sell a Transportation Business?

Actual exit timelines will vary from business to business, but transportation business sales typically require 12–24 months from initial decision to closing. At Axial, our data shows that it takes an average of 415 days for transportation companies to close, from market date to final settlement, though this will also change based on your company’s EBITDA.

The preparation phase takes 6–12 months to optimize the business for sale, including financial system improvements, operational documentation, and addressing key person dependencies.

The marketing and sales process typically takes 6–9 months with an experienced advisor. Freight cycle timing may extend this timeline if market conditions aren’t favorable for the business’s specific situation.

You can learn more in our post on:

• Devising an Ideal Exit Date
• The 1,000 Day Exit Plan

How Much Does It Cost to Work with an M&A Advisor?

M&A advisor fees vary by advisor and deal size. Some advisors charge retainer fees while others work on success-fee only arrangements.

Success fees typically follow the Lehman Formula (5% on the first $1 million, with declining percentages on higher amounts). The ROI typically justifies these fees, as the 6–25% higher sale prices that experienced advisors achieve usually far exceed their costs. Transportation-specialized advisors may command slightly higher fees than generalists but typically deliver better outcomes due to their industry expertise and buyer networks.

The key is finding an advisor with demonstrated experience in transportation M&A who can navigate the industry’s unique challenges and access the right buyers for your specific transportation business.