Independent business valuation · Transport and logistics

You've Had an Offer for Your Haulage or Logistics Business. Is It Fair?

The offer letter quotes a headline price. What it leaves out is how much of that figure survives the finance on your trucks, and what a buyer who wanted the business less would have offered. An independent valuation answers both in two working days, before you reply.

Owners of haulage, distribution and warehousing companies tend to contact us at one of a handful of moments. A larger operator or a private equity-backed group has rung about buying the business. The transport manager and a couple of senior staff want to buy it. A shareholder wants to retire and the others have to agree a price. Or the owner is looking at the next fleet replacement cycle and wondering whether to fund it or sell before it falls due.

Whichever it is, the first number on the table has come from someone with a reason to choose it. The owner is usually the only party involved without a valuation of their own.

Email Mark for a free discovery call See what a valuation report contains

The stakes

What finding out late costs

An illustrative general haulage and contract distribution business with £14.0m turnover, 60 tractor units and reported EBITDA of £1.60m. The owner had been told at a trade dinner that haulage firms sell for six times EBITDA and expected about £9.6m. The company and every figure below are fictional.

Illustrative figures, £000
Reported EBITDA	1,600
Owner's salary raised to a market-rate managing director and transport manager	(90)
Spouse's salary with no operational role added back	40
Profit on sale of old tractor units removed	(85)
One-off costs of a depot move added back	50
Yard rent paid to the owner set at market rate	(45)
Driver pay rise already agreed for next year	(60)
Maintainable EBITDA	1,410
Enterprise value at an illustrative 4.5 times	6,345
Cash at completion	1,100
Hire purchase on tractor units and trailers	(2,150)
Bank loan	(400)
Dilapidations owed on the leased warehouse	(150)
Working capital below the normal level	(120)
Equity value to the owner	4,625

The owner expected £9.6m and would have received about £4.6m. Most of the gap is the hire purchase on the fleet. It sits below EBITDA, so the owner had never counted it, and every pound outstanding came off the proceeds. The rest is a multiple quoted second-hand from larger businesses. The 4.5 times multiple is for illustration only. A real valuation sets the multiple from the evidence in your business and comparable transactions.

The numbers you have been given

Why the numbers you have been given are not neutral

Every valuation an owner hears before a sale comes from someone with a stake in the answer.

The buyer

wants to pay as little as you will accept. Their first figure is an opening position, and their advisers know where haulage businesses get discounted better than you do.

A broker

competing for your instruction has a reason to quote high. A large number wins the mandate. Whether the market agrees comes out months later, usually in due diligence.

Your accountant

knows your numbers better than anyone, but may never have taken a business through a sale or sat across from a buyer's due diligence team.

None of them is acting in bad faith. Each one is answering a different question from the one you are asking, which is what the business is worth to a buyer today and how much of that reaches you.

Independence

Why our valuation is independent

When we value your business, we have no reason to push the number up or down. The fee is fixed and agreed before any work starts, and it is the same whatever the number turns out to be. You are not signing up to a sale, and nothing in the engagement commits you to anything further.

The report is yours. Show it to a buyer, your bank, your accountant or your family. Every figure in it traces back to one of three valuation methods, with each adjustment explained in the Excel model you receive alongside it.

Owners rarely go on to ask us to sell their business after a valuation, although it has happened. Most come to us for the reason this page exists. They want a number they can trust before someone else tells them what it is.

Who does the work

Who does the work, and what a valuation finds

Mark Ross Roberts FMVA CBCA carries out every valuation himself, with 30 years on the deal side of UK mid-market transactions. The largest corporate group he has negotiated against had a turnover of £3.2bn.

96%
In 96% of completed Achieve mandates, the price agreed at heads of terms is the price paid at completion.
Source: Achieve Corporation mandate records

The two summaries below show the kind of finding a valuation produces. They are examples written for this page, not records of real mandates, and they carry that label on the website until real anonymised deals replace them.

Illustrative example

Temperature-controlled haulage, East Anglia

Turnover: £8m to £12m
Buyer: A larger chilled distribution group
What the valuation found: Most of the revenue came from one food manufacturer under a dedicated contract that either side could end on three months' notice. The buyer's opening offer cut the headline price to reflect that. The valuation measured the exposure and set out what the contract's fuel and wage indexation clauses were worth to a buyer.
Outcome: The owner kept the headline price and accepted a deferred payment tied to the contract being renewed, which he expected it to be.

Illustrative example

Pallet distribution and warehousing, Yorkshire

Turnover: £4m to £6m
Buyer: The management team, funded by a bank
What the valuation found: The warehouse lease had two years left, with a full repairing obligation that nobody had provided for. Hire purchase balloon payments on eight trailers also fell due within a year of completion. Both came off the price the managers could pay.
Outcome: The funding feasibility work showed the debt the bank was likely to lend. The deal was restructured with part of the price deferred, and the owner agreed terms knowing which costs were his and which were the buyer's.

Sector insight

What buyers pay for in transport and logistics

Trade buyers and private equity both pay more for revenue they can see continuing and a fleet that will not need funding the year after they buy it. In haulage and logistics a buyer can test most of this in the first week of due diligence.

A clean operator's licence and the records to prove it. Maintenance files, tachograph analysis, driver hours and a quiet history with DVSA. Traffic commissioners determined 1,066 public inquiries in 2024-25 (Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain, Annual Report 2024-25, 2025). A buyer's lawyers will ask whether your company has been the subject of one.
Dedicated contracts with cost pass-through. Contract logistics and dedicated fleet work on agreed terms, with fuel surcharge mechanisms and annual rate reviews that move with driver pay, is worth more than the same turnover won on the spot market each week.
Specialist capability a competitor cannot add in a month. Temperature-controlled, ADR hazardous goods, abnormal loads, or bonded and customs-approved warehousing. Each needs equipment, trained people and approvals, which narrows the field of rivals for the work.
A fleet that matches its replacement plan. Euro VI tractor units on a documented cycle, with finance that ends before the vehicles do. A buyer looks at the age profile and the balloon payments together.
Someone other than the owner holding the licence together. A nominated transport manager, a traffic office and customer contacts who deal with the business, with the owner one step removed from the daily planning.

What pulls the value down

The discounts in this sector repeat from deal to deal, because buyers have been caught by each of them before.

One retailer or manufacturer carrying most of the work. Buyers price the risk of losing that account, and they read the notice period. Where one customer dominates and the contract can end on short notice, part of the price is often deferred and tied to that customer staying.
The owner is the transport manager, or the only person the big customers ring. If the owner holds the CPC and the relationships, a buyer has to replace both. They assume some of the revenue leaves with the owner and price it accordingly.
Rates that do not follow costs. Spot work, or contracts with no fuel surcharge and no agreed review, leave the margin exposed to diesel prices and driver pay. The DfT's 2025 haulage survey found between 11% and 26% of businesses raised driver wages in each quarter of the year, and 26% of businesses surveyed reported HGV driver vacancies in the final quarter (DfT, HGV driver vacancies 2025, 2026).
An ageing fleet funded to its limit. Vehicles that need replacing soon after completion become a capital expenditure demand the buyer deducts. Hire purchase and balloon payments come off the price as debt on top of that.
A compliance history with gaps. Missed safety inspections, MOT failures, driver hours infringements or a previous public inquiry are found in due diligence and used to renegotiate, and a serious finding can put the licence itself at risk.
A leased warehouse near the end of its term. Dilapidations under a full repairing lease are a liability the seller usually bears. If they are not in the accounts, a buyer will put them in the price.

Most of these can be fixed, or at least evidenced, given twelve months' notice. A valuation done early shows which ones apply to your business and roughly what each is costing you in price.

Method

How we value a transport and logistics business, and why the multiple comes last

Anyone can take a year's EBITDA from the filed accounts and multiply it by a number from a trade magazine. A buyer's advisers will not price your business that way, and neither do we. The multiple is the last thing we set. It comes out of the work below and differs for every business, so we do not publish a typical range.

Before any multiple is applied, we test the business on:

Its defensible moat. What stops a rival haulier, or the customer's own fleet, from taking the work? Specialist equipment and approvals, depot locations close to the customer, embedded IT links with the customer's systems, and the disruption a customer faces in moving the contract.
The market around it. A PESTLE review of the pressures on its customers and costs. Tonnes lifted by GB-registered HGVs fell 3% in 2025, and empty running reached 31% of vehicle kilometres (DfT, Domestic road freight statistics 2025, 2026). Add diesel prices, London's vehicle safety and emissions rules, and the dates set for ending sales of new diesel HGVs: 2035 for vehicles of 26 tonnes and under, 2040 for heavier ones (DfT, consultation outcome, 2022).
Its competitive position. Porter's Five Forces applied to the business itself: the power of vehicle dealers, fuel suppliers and drivers, the buying power of large retailers and manufacturers, the ease with which a new operator can start with leased trucks, substitutes such as rail and in-house fleets, and rivalry for the same loads.
Its real competitive edge. The specific reason customers use this operator, and whether that reason survives the owner stepping back from the traffic office.
Capital expenditure. The age and condition of the fleet, trailers and warehouse equipment, and what must be spent to deliver the forecast. Of 522,000 HGVs licensed in the UK in mid-2025, about 1,000 were zero emission (DfT, Vehicle licensing statistics April to June 2025, 2025). A buyer will ask how your replacement plan deals with that, and what it costs.
Frameworks and contracts. Dedicated contracts, framework and preferred-carrier agreements, warehousing agreements and pallet network membership, how much of next year's revenue they cover, and the notice periods and indexation clauses in each.
Quality of earnings. Whether profits in the years before a sale were flattered by stretching vehicle replacement, cutting maintenance or holding back driver training. Rising EBITDA alongside an older fleet and a thinner workshop budget is the pattern buyers look for, and they find it.

Only then do we value the business three ways: on maintainable earnings, on a discounted cash flow of its own forecast, and on the net value of its assets. In an asset-heavy haulage business the asset method matters more than in most sectors. Where the methods disagree, the gap shows where a buyer will push.

On published multiples. BDO's Private Company Price Index put the average UK trade buyer multiple at 9.8 times EBITDA in Q3 2024, and 12.2 times for private equity (BDO, PCPI Q3 2024). Over the previous four years, the trade deals behind that index averaged an enterprise value of £14.5m (BDO, PCPI Q1 2024). BDO also counted 69 completed UK logistics deals in 2025, down from 93 in 2024 (BDO, UK M&A Update Q4 2025, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, 2026). An average built from larger businesses in other sectors says nothing about your licence, your fleet or your contracts. We use such figures only as one cross-check against the result of the work above.

We value businesses up to £450m enterprise value. The fixed fees below cover businesses with turnover from £500k to £30m, and larger businesses are scoped on the discovery call.

The accounts

Where haulage and logistics accounts mislead

Filed accounts for transport companies hide several things a buyer's accountants will find. We correct for them before anyone else does.

Hire purchase sits below EBITDA. Capital repayments and interest on the fleet never touch EBITDA, so a business can report healthy earnings while most of its cash goes to the finance companies. Every pound outstanding comes off the sale price.
Profits on selling old trucks. Gains on disposals of tractor units and trailers are one-off, and a generous depreciation policy makes them larger. They are taken out of maintainable earnings.
Contract hire and leases treated as running costs. Some vehicles on contract hire or long leases are, in substance, financed assets. A buyer's accountants may treat the commitment as debt, so we check each agreement.
Dilapidations that were never provided for. A full repairing lease on a warehouse or yard carries a liability that grows every year and often appears nowhere in the accounts.
Fuel surcharge timing. Surcharges billed a month or a quarter in arrears flatter or depress the year-end, depending on which way diesel moved. We look at the margin across the cycle.
Family on the payroll, and rent paid to the owner. A spouse paid for no role is added back. An owner who also acts as transport manager on a low salary needs a market-rate replacement costed in, and a yard rented from the owner at below market rent will be reset after completion.

The offer

The valuation, the fee and how to start

You receive a valuation memorandum, a written report and a locked Excel model, delivered in 2 working days. Mark Ross Roberts FMVA CBCA does the work himself. Nothing is passed to a junior analyst.

Annual turnover	Independent valuation	With funding feasibility
£500k to £5m	£1,200	£1,700
£5m to £10m	£2,000	£2,500
£10m to £30m	£3,000	£3,500
Above £30m	Scoped on the call	Scoped on the call

All fees exclude VAT. Funding feasibility adds the bank debt a lender is likely to advance against the business and tests deal structures on debt service cover, which matters if you are selling to a management team or buying a competitor.

How to start: email Mark at mark@achieve-corporation.com with a line on the business and what the valuation is for. You get a reply the same day, then a free discovery call that confirms the right report, the fee and the turnaround. Nothing is payable until you agree to go ahead.

Email Mark for a free discovery call

Questions owners ask

Frequently asked questions

I've had an offer for my haulage business. How do I know if it's fair?

Compare it with an independent valuation built from your own accounts, before you reply. The valuation shows what a buyer is likely to pay, how much of the headline reaches you after vehicle finance, other debt and working capital, and which parts of the offer are open to negotiation.

Is an independent valuation worth it if I already have a broker's figure?

A broker's figure is often given to win your instruction. An independent valuation has no stake in the number, shows every adjustment, and gives you something to test the broker's figure against. At a fixed fee from £1,200 excluding VAT, it costs less than one point off the multiple on almost any deal.

Will you try to sell me a sale mandate afterwards?

No. The valuation is a standalone engagement at a fixed fee, and you are under no obligation to instruct us for anything else. Most owners use the report to negotiate with a buyer they already have, or to plan their next few years.

How much is my transport business worth?

There is no reliable rule of thumb. The value depends on your contracts and how easily customers could leave, the age of the fleet and what is still owed on it, your compliance record, and whether recent profits held up because vehicle replacement was put off. A multiple of EBITDA comes at the end of that work, followed by deductions for debt and working capital at completion. Published averages describe larger, different businesses.

Is the hire purchase on my lorries and trailers deducted from the price?

In almost every deal, yes. Hire purchase and finance leases are treated as debt in a cash-free, debt-free price, so every pound outstanding at completion reduces the amount you receive. Balloon payments due soon after completion are counted as well.

Does my operator's licence go with the business when I sell?

Operator licences are not transferable (Office of the Traffic Commissioner, 2014). In a sale of the company's shares the licence stays with the company, and a buyer will want any change of transport manager or directors handled with the traffic commissioner before completion. In a sale of the assets the buyer needs a licence of its own, which affects timing and price.

I'm the transport manager as well as the owner. Does that affect the value?

Yes. A buyer has to appoint a qualified transport manager to replace you, and will cost that into the price. If customer relationships also run through you, expect part of the price to be deferred until they are shown to stay.

Most of my work comes from one retailer. How will a buyer treat that?

The more turnover depends on one customer, and the shorter the notice period in the contract, the more a buyer discounts the price or defers part of it. The valuation measures the exposure and shows what it is likely to cost you.

Can you value a business for a management buyout?

Yes. Choose the valuation with funding feasibility, which shows the bank debt a lender is likely to advance and whether the management team's deal structure can be serviced after the fleet finance is paid.

Is the valuation confidential?

Yes. An NDA is available before you share any figures, and your drivers, customers and suppliers are not contacted.

Sources:

Valuation guides: EBITDA analysis · Earnings multiples · Asset-based valuation · Discounted cash flow

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