Sell My Concrete Business in Fort Myers: Fleet, Backlog and Price
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Sell My Concrete Business in Fort Myers: Fleet, Backlog and Price
Walk your yard on a Sunday and count what you own. Two pumps, four mixers, the skid steers, the forms, the laser screed you financed in 2023. Most owners carry that total in their head as what the company is worth.
A buyer does not. When he opens the file on a Lee County concrete contractor, he reads the equipment schedule once and the backlog three times.
If you are trying to sell my concrete business in Fort Myers — the phrase most owners type first — the gap between those two documents is where your price lives. Behind them sits a third: three rebuild years a buyer will not assume repeat.
Is there a buyer for a Lee County concrete company in 2026?
Yes. Lee County authorized 15,411 new private housing units in 2024 and 13,547 in 2025, against 10,673 in 2020 — a building base that grew through the storm and stayed there. Demand for your company is not the hard part. Proving which of your assets actually produces the earnings is.
Hurricane Ian came ashore at Cayo Costa on September 28, 2022 as a 130-knot Category 4. In Lee County it impacted at least 52,514 structures, destroying 5,369 and leaving 14,245 with major damage. Nearly every one of those repairs touched a slab, a driveway, a seawall or a pool deck.
What it did not change is the county's underlying construction rate. Read the permit series and the storm is almost invisible.
The Census Bureau's permit series for Lee County runs 10,673 units authorized in 2020, 13,394 in 2021, 13,621 in the Ian year, 13,556 in 2023, 15,411 in 2024 and 13,547 in 2025. The county recorded 283,003 Ian insurance claims — more than any other in Florida, on the state regulator's count — without the construction pipeline moving much at all.
The two years worth arguing about are 2024 and 2025. Permits peaked at 15,411 in 2024 — the year most rebuild concrete actually got poured, roughly eighteen months behind the storm — then settled back to 13,547. A buyer treats 13,500 as the run rate and 2024 as an event. If your revenue chart has the same shape, expect the same treatment.
Step 1: What is your fleet actually worth on a buyer's spreadsheet?
Less than most owners assume, and not as an addition. In deals this size the equipment needed to produce the earnings is already inside the multiple — a buyer pays a multiple of earnings for a going concern, not that plus the auction value of six trucks. Iron changes the financing more than it changes the price.
The value language matters, because two appraisers can look at the same pump truck and write down different numbers. Fair market value in continued use assumes the machine keeps working in a running business; orderly liquidation value assumes it gets sold off over a few months. Lenders lean toward the second, because that is what they can recover.
Here is the part most concrete owners get wrong. When you recast your profit and loss to reach seller's discretionary earnings, defined, depreciation gets added back — and on a fleet-heavy contractor that overstates cash flow, because the machines wear out. A buyer's analyst answers it by deducting maintenance capital expenditure: the annual spend needed to hold the fleet at its current capability. Pull five years of equipment purchases, divide by five, and do that subtraction before he does.
Then separate the fleet into three piles:
• Working iron. Machines that ran more than 60% of available hours last year. Inside the earnings, inside the price.
• Idle iron. The second pump you kept for the rebuild, the trailer nobody hooks up. A separate negotiation, often better sold before you go to market.
• Financed iron. Anything with a UCC-1 against it. The payoff comes out of your proceeds at closing, not the buyer's pocket.
Three things decide how an appraiser treats the first pile: hour meters, maintenance records, and whether the serial numbers on your depreciation schedule match the machines in the yard.
On what the earnings themselves are worth: Business Valuation Resources, an independent valuation-data firm rather than a brokerage, reports a median selling price to SDE multiple of 2.3x for construction businesses (NAICS 23) in both 2023 and 2024, and a median price to EBITDA of 3.6x for 2024, in its DealStats Value Index. That is the whole construction sector, nationally — not concrete, and not Lee County.
Concrete-company transactions are not published as a Lee County series. The numbers here pair a national construction reference with Sailfish's labeled underwriting ranges.
Sailfish underwrites owner-run Florida concrete contractors at roughly 2x to 2.5x SDE in 2026, and 2.5x to 3x where someone other than the owner prices the work, the working fleet is owned outright, and the backlog is signed rather than bid. Those bands are our underwriting view, not market data, and not a promise. The statewide picture sits on our page about what concrete companies are worth across Florida.
Want the real number for your company? We will read three years, deduct maintenance capex the way a buyer will, and separate your backlog from your bid list. No cost, no obligation. Book a call.
Step 2: How do buyers read the bid pipeline behind the fleet?
By separating signed from hoped-for. Executed subcontracts with schedule dates, retainage terms and named general contractors underwrite. A bid list does not. Buyers typically want twelve months of bid-to-award history, and any single GC above 25% of revenue gets sized as a risk rather than described as a relationship.
Four things get pulled apart in that review.
Margin fade. The spread between bid gross margin and close-out gross margin, job by job. A contractor who bids 22% and finishes at 21% is worth more than one who bids 30% and finishes at 17%.
Mix. Residential flatwork, commercial slabs, structural, site work and seawall work carry different margins, crews and repeat rates. Report them separately or a buyer will assume the worst one is the whole company.
Schedule risk. Work sold in 2025 that pours in 2027 carries material and fuel exposure. Escalation clauses and liquidated-damages terms both get read.
Who signed. Written master subcontract agreements with assignment language are worth more than fifteen years of good handshakes.
One item belongs to your attorney, not to us: Florida's construction lien law, Fla. Stat. ch. 713, sets short and strict deadlines for notices and lien claims, and public projects add bond and payment rules under Fla. Stat. §255.05. Whether your open receivables are still protected is a legal question with a calendar attached.
Step 3: What in a concrete company's numbers gets discounted?
Five things, reliably. Depreciation added back without a maintenance-capex deduction, margin fade between bid and close-out, one general contractor above a quarter of revenue, an owner who prices every job himself, and crews paid on 1099 who look like employees. Each is a dollar deduction, not a vague concern.
The estimator problem is the one that costs Lee County owners the most. If you walk the site, take the takeoff, price the job and sign the contract, then the company's competitive advantage leaves with you on closing day. A buyer prices that as key-man risk and either lowers the number or pushes part of it into an earnout.
The fix takes about a year and it is not complicated: hire or promote an estimator, have him price the work, review it rather than redo it, and build twelve months of his win-rate history. That history is the evidence.
Crew classification is the second. Finishers paid on 1099 who work only for you, on your schedule, with your tools, create an exposure a buyer's accountant will price. So does cash payroll. Neither survives diligence.
The city-level buyer and transaction context is covered on our Fort Myers business broker page.
Step 4: What does confidentiality cost a contractor who bids work?
About sixty to ninety days of discipline. You go out as a Southwest Florida concrete contractor described by revenue band, service mix and backlog summary — no name, no yard photographs, no project list. With 22,756 employer establishments in the county and a short list of GCs feeding most subs, three specifics identify you.
Bidding contractors carry a risk the service trades do not. A general contractor who hears you are selling has a legitimate reason to hedge, and hedging looks like giving the next package to someone else while he waits. That does not just cost you a job. It thins the backlog you are being valued on, in the exact months a buyer is reading it.
Suppliers are the other leak. Ready-mix, rebar and pump-service reps talk to every contractor in Lee County, and a rumor started at a will-call counter moves faster than any listing. Financials release in stages after an NDA and a financial screen; identifying details release last. That is how a Florida sale process actually runs from our side of the table.
Step 5: Which buyers can finance a fleet-heavy business?
Three groups, and financing sorts them faster than price does. An individual buyer using SBA 7(a) financing, a regional site-work or concrete operator from Collier, Charlotte or Sarasota county, and occasionally a general contractor buying its own subcontractor. Appraised equipment is collateral, which changes what a lender will fund.
The SBA rule is worth knowing before you meet anyone. Under SOP 50 10 8, effective June 1, 2025, a lender may value the business in-house when the intangible portion of a change-of-ownership loan — the amount financed less appraised real estate and equipment — is $250,000 or less. Above that, or where buyer and seller are related, an independent valuation from a qualified source is required.
Read that twice if you own a lot of iron. A documented, appraisable fleet pulls part of the purchase price out of the intangible bucket, which is the bucket lenders find hardest to fund. Your equipment schedule is a financing document, not just a tax document.
The regional operator is the buyer Lee County sellers underestimate. Crews from Naples, Punta Gorda and Sarasota already work within an hour of Fort Myers, on the same codes and the same suppliers. They buy crews and backlog, not yards.
We will not name platforms or roll-ups. No independent dataset tracks concrete acquisition activity county by county in Florida, and the lists that circulate are published by firms that sell businesses for a living. And plainly: Sailfish has no closed transaction in Lee County to date. Every county figure here is cited public data, not our deal file.
Step 6: Which licenses, liens and contracts have to move at closing?
All three, and none moves automatically. Florida gives a business organization 60 days to employ a replacement sole qualifying agent under Fla. Stat. §489.119(3)(a), and it cannot contract in the interim absent a temporary certificate, which covers incomplete contracts only. Every UCC-1 on your equipment must be paid off or assumed.
Licensing for concrete work in Florida is less uniform than it is for roofing or plumbing, which is exactly why it needs a lawyer rather than a blog. Some concrete and masonry work is performed under a Division I contractor license as defined in Fla. Stat. §489.105(3); a great deal of it is performed under specialty or local competency licensing issued at the county or municipal level, with its own scope limits. Whichever applies, the credential sits with a person and the company contracts through that person.
So: list every license the company relies on, whose name is on each, which jurisdictions it covers, and what happens the day you resign. Then have a construction attorney tell you which survive your deal structure. We describe how it generally works; we do not give legal advice.
The rest is documentary rather than difficult: equipment titles and lien payoffs, the depreciation schedule reconciled to the yard, open subcontracts with consent-to-assign language, retainage balances, warranty obligations on completed slabs, the Lee County business tax receipt. Sixty to ninety days is normal. Have your CPA model the purchase-price allocation across equipment, goodwill and a non-compete before you sign — on a fleet-heavy deal that split moves real money.
What mistakes cost Fort Myers concrete owners money at closing?
Three, and the first is the most expensive. Leading with the fleet instead of the earnings, carrying equipment debt into the closing statement without modeling it, and selling three rebuild years as the new baseline. All three are fixable before a buyer is at the table, and all three cost real money if they are not.
Leading with the iron. A buyer knows what a used mixer sells for. He is buying earnings and the backlog that produces them. Put the equipment schedule in the appendix, where it supports the financing conversation instead of setting the price expectation.
Forgetting the payoff. Owners quote themselves a headline price and forget that equipment notes come off the top. Build your own net-proceeds sheet first: price, less payoffs, less fees, less the taxes your CPA calculates. Shorter conversation now than at the closing table.
Selling the rebuild as the run rate. Lee County permits hit 15,411 in 2024 and fell back to 13,547 in 2025. If your 2024 looked like a career year, show it split — rebuild work on one line, base business on another — and let the base business stand on its own. No lender underwrites the next hurricane. Build the price on what repeats.
Frequently asked questions
Does my equipment get added on top of the multiple when I sell?
Usually not. The multiple assumes the assets required to produce the earnings come with the business, in working order and free of debt. Idle machines are a separate negotiation, and equipment loans are paid from proceeds at closing. Where the fleet helps is financing: appraised iron is collateral a lender can size against.
How do buyers value my backlog if most of it is bid, not signed?
Bid work carries almost no weight. Buyers underwrite executed subcontracts with schedule dates, scope and retainage terms, then read twelve months of bid-to-award history to judge whether the pipeline converts. A contractor with a $4 million bid list and $600,000 signed is valued on the $600,000, plus credit for a documented win rate.
Do I need a Florida contractor license to sell a concrete business?
Selling the company is not itself licensed activity, but the license it operates under matters. Florida gives a business organization 60 days to employ a replacement sole qualifying agent, and concrete work may sit under a Division I license or under county or municipal specialty licensing. Have a construction attorney map yours before the LOI.
Did the Ian rebuild make my Fort Myers concrete company worth more?
It made it bigger, not automatically more valuable. Lee County permits ran 13,556 in 2023, peaked at 15,411 in 2024 and settled at 13,547 in 2025. Buyers normalize spikes toward the run rate. Owners who split rebuild revenue from base revenue keep control of that conversation.
What happens to my general contractor relationships when I sell?
They get tested. Master subcontract agreements often require written consent to assignment, and a GC that learns about a sale mid-bid can route the next package elsewhere. Confidentiality protects the backlog, not just your privacy. Pull your subcontracts and count how many carry assignment language.
How long does it take to sell a concrete company in Lee County?
Plan on six to nine months from launch to closing, with two to six months of preparation first. Equipment appraisals, lien payoffs and subcontract consents are the items most likely to add weeks. Companies with recast financials, a reconciled equipment schedule and signed backlog close on the short end.
Talk to us about your Lee County concrete company
We will read your last three years, reconcile the equipment schedule, separate signed backlog from the bid list, and tell you what a buyer will actually underwrite. Confidential, no cost, no obligation.