Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - This Business Is a License to Print Money

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

In this episode, the hosts break down a $34M revenue heavy equipment dealership in Western Canada doing $9.2M in EBITDA — a high‑growth, high‑margin, possibly monopolistic business — and question why it’s for sale, if it’s truly a “license to print money,” and whether a U.S. buyer could even touch it.Business Listing – https://dashboard.dealforce.com/deals/profiles/profile66806.pdfWelcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.💰 Sponsored by:Capital Pad – A platform connecting accredited investors with vetted small business acquisition deals. Discover exclusive opportunities at https://capitalpad.comAcquisition Lab – Your fast-track to business ownership. Get hands-on support, world-class resources, and join a top-tier community of acquisition entrepreneurs. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.acquisitionlab.com and mention Acquisitions Anonymous!In this episode, the Acquisitions Anonymous crew — Michael, Bill, Heather, and guest Josh Thomason — explore one of the most eye‑popping deals they've seen: a Western Canada-based industrial equipment dealership with $34M in projected 2025 revenue and $9.2M EBITDA. The business serves over 700 clients across construction, forestry, recycling, and oil field reclamation sectors, offering equipment sales, rentals, parts, transport, fabrication, and even financing. With a 26% CAGR over the past 3 years and 30%+ EBITDA margins, this is not your average dealer — it might be a monopolistic goldmine.Key Highlights:- Heavy equipment dealer with $34M projected revenue and $9.2M EBITDA- Product lines include crushing, screening, conveyors, shredders & wash plants- Strong customer base: 700+ accounts, 84% repeat business, low concentration- Growth: 26% CAGR over 3 years, with diverse income from sales, rentals, and parts- Risks: brand dependence, dealership transferability, cross-border complexity for U.S. buyersSubscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. My name is Bill Dallisandro and this is the internet's number one podcast on buying, selling, and operating small businesses. I'm here today with my co-host Michael Girdley, Heather Anderson, and Josh Toninson. And Gerds found a really interesting business today. I called it a license to print money. It is a heavy equipment dealership in Western Canada as $9 million of EBITDA has been growing at a 26-per- We are kind of shocked this business is for sale. So we dig into that. Talk about why we like it, some risks, how you might do this deal. This was a really fun one, a great business that we found.

So without further ado, enjoy this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory. Hey everyone, it's Bill, and I want to tell you about maybe the most exciting sponsor we've had in a long time on the pod. It's called CapitalPad, and it is the thing that I wish existed when I started my journey of operating and investing in small businesses. So CapitalPad is a marketplace for acquisition entrepreneurs that is people who want to buy a business and need capital to list their deals and solicit capital from other people who want to invest in acquisitions. So if you want to back somebody buying a small business, CapitalPad is the place to do it. And if you want to buy a business and need capital, you can go on CapitalPad to be introduced to

investors. So the really great thing, too, from the investor side is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions all up front in black and white, basically CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses. And the returns can be really, really good. I'm so stoked they exist. It's founded by my friend Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right. So if this sounds like something that's appealing to you, if you want to buy a small business and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check

out CapitalPad.com and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you. All right, welcome back to Acquisitions Anonymous. This is a coffee episode. It is 8 a.m. Pacific time, 11 a.m. Eastern. So the Eastern crew here is me, Bill DeLessandro, Michael Gurdley, Josh Tonnison from Tonneson, from Tonneson, accounting services, and the West Coast crew, Heather Anderson from VizoCap. Good morning, everybody. Good morning.

Gertley is hitting us blind with this deal. So you're going to get live reaction from everybody. caffeinated my reaction. That's fine because I found it three minutes ago, so it should be great. But it's a fascinating core of the business, and I kind of wonder why it's on the market. So that's why I was like, oh, we should do this one. But before we do that, Josh, do you want to give everybody just a quick 30 seconds on who you are and what you do? Sure.

Yeah, I'm Josh Tunison. I own and operate Tunison accounting services. We specialize in quality of earnings reports for people buying small businesses. We do around 25 to 30 engagements a month. Again, usually for SBA-sized deals. a lot of times for first-time buyers. So if you want to reach out, feel free to hit me on LinkedIn,

or you can look up our website at tonus in accounting services.com. So would you say you've seen a lot of small businesses, Josh? We've done over 300 engagements, so quite a bit, yep. What percentage of deals that you look at? So you're doing 25 a month, so that's whatever, times 12, 300 a year, right? What percentage of deals have material falsehoods

in the seller materials presented? Yeah, I posted some. something on LinkedIn a couple, maybe two months ago or something with that. So my numbers might be off a little bit. But over half of them have some kind of material. And a lot of times it's like 30% off or so some type of material misstatement. And I think it was like 14% of the time or something like that. They actually understated it. They missed an ad back or something like that. But yeah, it's more often than not. A lot of times you have people using maybe cash basis stuff. That'll really mess up what the business actually earns, right? Or they,

they forget to add back, like gain loss accounts and stuff that don't really impact operation. So it's a wide variety of things we see. What percentage of those do you think are intentionally misleading? I'd say some other quality earnings providers might use the word fraud a little bit more than I do. I think typically they don't actually mean to mess it up. I mean, for the broker, like you don't want the deal to die, right? Sometimes you want to have somebody, like you just want more interest in it, right? But if I'm a broker, I want a nice honest deal.

that way I have a higher close rate and I don't waste all this time with deals dying. And a lot of times the sellers don't really know what's going on with their business too. So I would say it's largely, maybe you could say negligence a little bit, but it's very rarely anything intentional. So the only thing that I say maybe is somewhat a little intentional is like sometimes they sell it a little much. Like if they do have a very contract heavy business and they lost a large client, right, they should really disclose that and recast their prior periods if you're not going to be able to replace that

with somebody. but most of the other stuff is just kind of bad math I've seen. Yeah, awesome. Well, kudos to you for not being like cynical. We'll check in next year and see if you get that way. All right, so let me pitch you guys on this deal, because this deal kind of confuses me, but I think it's super interesting for a number of reasons.

So it is a heavy equipment dealer located in Western Canada. Heather, this is your chance to think about that horse farm, you've always wanted to own just outside Vancouver, one hour to skiing, one hour to the beach. You know what I'm talking about. So let's dig in. So the company is a well-known industrial equipment dealer that provides equipment sales, repair, rental, transport,

fabrication, and finance services. The company is an authorized dealer for Western Canada for a recognized international heavy equipment manufacturers. The product line includes crushing, screening, conveyors, feeders, trommels, and shredding equipment, as well as wash plants. The company sells and rents to companies involved in the crushing, topsoil, compost screening, C&D waste and recycling, construction and demolition, road maintenance, landscaping,

forestry, and oil field reclamation, and also sells and rents to cities and municipalities. As the preeminent dealer in the region, the company serves over 700 active accounts with an 84% rate of repeat business. In 2025, net sales were an estimated $34 million, and they did an EBDA of $9.2 million. Their growth rate has been going up into the right in 2022. They did $18 million, $2023, $27 million, $204, $30 million, $225, $34 million. And they estimate that they will keep growing about 10% per year. Revenue sources are relatively like straight up split. So a little over half is equipment sales. Then they do equipment rental, which is another 30% or so. And then the remainder is parts and what's that last word. Freight. Is that what that says, Bill?

Freight. Yeah, freight. Weird. Okay. Well, I don't know how they're getting freight, but we'll come back to that. So, where the deal going on the screen here? Okay, now here it is. Besides the equipment sales rental repair, the company house provides transport services with a fleet of five tractor units at a variety of different trailers, in-house financing services, and a fabrication shop. So I guess, build these five tractor units are them getting paid to move equipment around for people. Yeah, they're delivering the equipment that you rented or bought from them. Yeah.

Over 700 customers, the largest account is 12% of total sales, so they don't have customer concentration according to them. They have a complete management team, including a sales manager, general manager, parts manager, service manager, and comptroller, and provide the necessary experience and continuity for new ownership.

It has a 14,000 square foot office and shop, a 10,000 square foot parts warehouse, and they're near a major city and adequate for near-term expansion. The company also has an 8.5-acre storage yard, a 8,400 square foot satellite shop, and the company's equipment inventory tractors and trailers had a net book value of $27.53 million as of its recent fiscal year end. And we can look at where this general equity managing director is, who may be able to tell us more closely which city this is. Because there's only like three kinds of

three major cities in Western Canada, so you've got to pick one. I will almost guarantee you it's in Saskatchewan in Saskatoon if I had to guess. It's a major agricultural center. I know this because one of our suppliers is there. So, you know, they grow a ton of flax. They grow a ton of grain there. There's a lot of farming in Saskatchewan, believe it or not, even though it's very cold. It's like the agricultural center of Canada.

I would and also it's like the only thing you know between between eastern and western Canada so this is either in Vancouver like on the very far coast because they said Western Canada or it's in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan if I had to guess what about uh what about like Calgary and is Calgary in Edmonton they're in Alberta are they considered Western Canada or Central Canada? I don't know if that would be considered is that like Central Canada exposing my Canadian geography a little bit do they have a Midwest Midwestern Canada? I have no idea.

I looked up Ted Rattenbury. He's in Vancouver. He's in Western Canada. Super Western Canada. Okay. So this is a, it's probably not Caterpillar, but it's something like that. It's a dealer for a heavy equipment brand, right?

Covering a region in Western Canada. Yeah. These are, in the United States at least, known to be some of the best licenses to print money that you can own, especially Caterpillar, but even other ones, is these heavy equipment dealers because they're typically in the United States territory protected, which means it's a monopoly. And you have the dealership from Caterpillar for this area, and any economic activity that needs Caterpillar equipment in your area comes to you, runs through you. And it's a great, I mean, some of the wealthiest people in North Carolina

are the Caterpillar people. It's unbelievable. And they, you know, their multi-generational businesses. It is a literal license to print money. I'm fascinated that this is for sale. So, so humorous anecdote for you guys.

So for a while, the Caterpillar dealer that's located here in San Antonio, who also, by the way, owns the Spurs, our NBA team to your point. There you go. Point reinforced.

So they, they would routinely host the national gathering for all the Caterpillar dealer, and I would kind of find out where it was as an airplane nerd. And just it was like private jet, private jet, private jet, private jet. Like they would all stream in on the same day. And then they would all, like 100 private jets would all stream out on the same day

when they would have their annual gathering here. Just license to print money when you have one of these things. Which is why it's fascinating that is for sale. Yeah. Right. That someone, they didn't try to sell it within the network already, that whoever has the territory nearby, it didn't buy it. that's my first inclination or my first question.

And then there is risk, obviously, because you need to know how solid and how transferable that dealership agreement is to somebody else because you're 100% dependent on maintaining yourself as the only dealer in that territory. And I noticed something that they said, I thought it was interesting about the inventory, how much inventory was on the balance sheet.

I typically see with distributors that they don't own the income, inventory, that they do use something like a flooring line of credit to sort of finance the inventory because it's very expensive to carry, you know, these kinds of heavy equipment pieces on your floor, so to speak. And so there's these flooring lines that make it a little more cost effective for them. So that would be one of my first questions is how does that work? Are you, is this company actually having to buy the inventory from the manufacturer and hold it until sale and, you know, that just changes the working capital component a lot if they do

have to do that. Well, they've got $27.5 million worth of inventory tracks and trailers on their books. So that's not... That's what they say here, but I've seen that said in teasers before, but when you ask some questions, you find out that it's not actually owned, it's on a flooring line. So that's why I ask the questions. It's sometimes stated in a way that you think they own it, but they don't. Yeah, they say netbook value. So they're definitely saying that it's like, you know, you take the asset and the net free, but they sometimes don't know what netbook value mean. So I agree 100%. Well, they do have a rental fleet, right? So the rental fleet in theory, that's going to be owned, owned equipment that they would have on their books. That's probably what

it is. Good point. That's the stuff they rent out. I mean, do we think this is kind of one of the also RAND brands. If you go look around, there's the two or three that really matter. There's Kat, Case, and then John Deere, and then you work your way down, and there's like random Chinese brand, random Indian brand.

That's kind of where my mind goes on this. I wonder if these guys are not attached to one of the winning dealership networks and dealership manufacturers. Well, let's define winning. They're making $9 million of EBITDA, and they've grown every year. I mean, they have a 26% sales kegger over the last three years.

It'd be $9 million. That's what, that's a barely profitable bill. I mean, yes, I agree. It's probably not a caterpillar, right? Because those are so rare. But this is a great business. I mean, it's objectively a great business. I mean, look at the financials, right?

It's up and to the right. It goes $18 million in 2022, $27.8 million, 23, $30 million. and 24, 34 million and 25. I mean, it's up and to the right. It's very, the margins are great. The margins are 30 percent, EBITDA margin. It has a contract monopoly. I mean, what's not to love? If it's not one of those established brands and it is the off brand, I think maybe the other risk to think about would be how well has that other brand protected their dealers. You know, how solid are these dealerships actually long term? Or Caterpillar, we know they're very, very solid. Maybe with the off brand, they're not as good.

Yeah. I mean, your contract with your brand, your dealership license is the whole business here. Yeah. Yeah. Is it transferable? You know, if you screw up, how quickly can they take it from you? You know, that's the risk. Like, you buy this thing. You footfall and stumble and they yank your dealer license and now you're zero and your test. Are you ready to take a leap into business ownership, but you don't know where to start? Well, look no further than Acquisition Lab. The Premier resource for entrepreneurs seeking to buy their dream business. Founded by Harvard MBA and acquisition expert Walker and Diebel, the lab is your fast-tracked success in the search diligence and acquisition process. With hands-on support, world-class resources, and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs,

Acquisition Lab gives you the tools and confidence to navigate every step of the journey. And we're proud to call Walker and Chelsea, the lab's director, longtime friends of the podcast. They're passionate about helping entrepreneurs like you take the next big step. So don't wait to make your business ownership dream of reality, visit AcquisitionLab.com today to learn more and schedule your free consultation. And when you do, be sure to tell them the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast sent you. I mean, there's also the issue that this isn't Canada, which is a foreign country. I know, I'm giving my, California and it's real cold up there, y'all. Dude, it's next door to Whistler, though. Ski area. Just saying. It's beautiful. Yeah. But yeah,

I mean, that's the other part about this is there's, that may be part of the, part of the reason it hasn't been rolled up is, you know, the U.S. manufacturers, you know, owners of these things, the other, the other dealers may just not want to take on the headache of owning a division up in Canada. It's different. Everything's different. Employment laws, financing, like, it's all just different. Could be it. But man, like, yeah, it's cold there and you probably got to live there. You know, there's, I don't, maybe you could run this absentee. Maybe. Maybe. B, I've said it's got a full staff, it's big enough, it's $9 million at Eibada. You can afford like a real management team on site here. This is a killer add-on, of course, for anybody who's in this. So I am going to give you, I'm going to give you a different take on where this is. It may not be in Saskatchewan. It may be in Edmonton. Because Edmonton is basically the oil capital.

And Calgary is like the little baby brother of Edmonton in terms of oil. but those are the two markets that are huge. And the thing that gets me here is it says forestry and oil field reclamation. And once you go out west, as I understand it, like deep British Columbia doesn't have oil field stuff going on, but they sure do in Alberta. And they also have forestry because you're right on the edge of the Rockies. So it makes me wonder if this is actually up in Edmonton. You're probably right. You're probably right.

This is Edmonton or Calgary, somewhere in there. Calgary is really nice. I have friends that live there, and it's a good place to be. You're right next to BAMP. If you notice everything for me is how close are you than you're a ski resort,

and it's right next to BAMP, yeah. Banff is awesome. If you're listening, I've never been to Banff, it's a wonderful place to visit. It's so cool. Yeah, I mean, the awesome thing about it, sorry, I'm about the ski nerd on you,

but the awesome thing about BAMF is the altitude is actually really low, so you don't get altitude sickness like you do in place in Colorado. So it's only like, at 2,500 feet elevation, yeah. And it's very dramatic, too. Lake Louise is in Banff, right?

There's a Fairmont hotel on Lake Louise, which is the most incredible hotel I have ever been to. Like, it looks out over the lake, and there's massive mountains behind it. You can go in summer, winter, go for a hike. It's so cool. Anyway, digression. So maybe I like this even more now.

It's a license for it money and it's near Banff. So, Josh, I'm an American buyer, and I'm looking at this. how do I make sure I don't get myself in trouble from a financial standpoint? So when I see this deal, I think of a couple things. One of them, it's a larger deal, so you hope they have a little bit better data than some of the smaller deals do. You see that they have the breakouts already between their different product types. So you have the rental, the sales, the parts, and the freight.

Just thinking through that a little bit, the equipment sales, and I'm making this up, I have no clue right, what they make. but I would think your margins might be like, we'll say 15 to 25%, maybe, obviously depending on what the relationship is with whoever's the manufacturer of them. But then a lot of times your parts actually have a much higher margin too. So there's an aspect of like how they've been growing where it's like if they sold a lot of equipment in the past five years, well, now you have this snowball effect where you're going to be able to go and now sell more parks when they need to fix them up a little bit. Freight, sometimes people and companies do a good job of charging margin on freight, sometimes

it's not as much, right? So if they don't charge a margin on freight, that could make sense as an opportunity there. And then one of the thing I thought was odd is I don't see any service type aspect either of this, right? So you think with these machinery or with these machines that you're selling, they are going to break down, right? I'm sure there's some warranty and stuff.

But even past that extended warranty period, you would think there'd be some kind of service department with the volume that they're selling, that they'll be able to go and assist them with fixing them up. I think this is a great business. I mean, what do you guys think this goes for? So, like, let's, it's $9 million of EBITDA. So it's scaled.

It's growing. It is, so that's all great. It's a legal monopoly. On the flip side, it's got $27 million of hard assets. Let's say for a minute, those are really owned equipment, right? It's not some lease mistake or whatever. That's working capital that is tied up. And let's assume also that that's fully depreciated value for a minute, or not fully, but partially, appropriately depreciated value for a minute.

How do you guys value this thing? There are a lot, I mean, there are a lot of transaction, you know, data sets on what different dealership networks are trading for, you know, everything from Nissan to those cats. Like, there's people who have that data. So I haven't seen any of it lately, but it wouldn't surprise me if this trades for like six or six. seven times EBTA plus the market value of all the assets. Wow. Like a lot. So I don't know, maybe I'm being too, I'm being bizarre o'girdly today and pricing

something way too high, but it feels like something like this is going to trade big time, big time number. And it's being listed by generation. Oh, now it's generational equity. The last time it was generational proof, wasn't it? But anyway. That's weird. Yeah.

But it's, which is a little surprising. Because that number you just shared would be like 70 to 8, well, 70 to 90 million, right? Yeah, I think this is probably pushing a hundred million dollar deal. Right. So, but it's being listed by generational equity, which is just a little strange to me. It's a way out of the answer. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's weird. The guy that's listing it is not a generational equity guy. It's this Ted Rattenbury from Business, Business Exchange Limited. which is in Vancouver. So it seems to be an affiliated brokerage in Canada. Okay. I mean, this is a big get for generational equity, or even an independent broker.

I mean, it's a $100 million deal. Yeah. I think my very first question to the broker when I talked to him is like, why haven't any of the other dealers bought this deal? Like, why is this being mass marketed? I don't understand. And curious what they say. me too. It's too good a business and there's too many obvious strategic buyers.

It's like seeing a Toyota dealership on Biz Buy Sell and you're like, what? This makes no sense. Like, these don't trade on Biz Buy Sell. But man, like if you call the broker and he's got some good reason, like maybe the other dealers aren't allowed to buy it because the brand has concentration requirements and they want everybody to own one territory only and, you know, it's something like that. and you're bidding on this and there's not 27 private equity firms also bidding on it. I mean, this could be one of those things. Like, the way you do really great in small business acquisition often is when you've got, somebody hires the wrong intermediary, right? Like, this business probably should have hired like a real investment bank who was going to shop it far and wide.

But, like, if they hire the wrong intermediary and you can get a generational, generational equity price on a Goldman Sachs asset, you know, you could do great here. Like, this is proprietary sourcing. You found a diamond under Iraq, potentially. Potentially. So it's worth a phone call to the broker. Can you buy this if you're not Canadian?

Maybe. I don't know. Screw it. I'm sending it to my Canadian friend. I'll let you know what it says. I probably could. You know, we've done some international deals on the show for, and it's always like we just can't get comfortable with it, you know, in Brazil or in Mexico or whatever.

But, you know, Canada is a first world economy. They have established property rights. You know, they have a structured legal system. They have established banking and capital markets. Like, I think you probably could do it. I don't know how to do it. You need a lawyer that knows how to do it, but I think you could do it. This is a huge Trump pissing off Canada beneficiary business because they are, the entirety of Canada is a super motivated to deintegrate from the United States. They are they feel very burned and hurt

elbows up, all that kind of stuff, and they are spending a ton of money to build roads, to integrate all the provinces, like that's got to help this, for sure. I love it. It's an American brand though, nerds. Yeah. You know, what if it's an American

brand of stuff? Oh, yeah. I mean, if this is John Deere, well, then you just put John Deere, comma, A, next to it. All right, I texted it to my friend and I wrote the following text. Here's the link and I wrote, friend, comma, we should buy this. So I'll let you know what he says.

I'm into it. Yeah, copyright is important with your texts. You write stuff like that, even if you only kind of half mean it, to really get them motivated to dig in. So we'll see. He's a type of guy to get angry about a text like that, so we'll see what happens.

I like it. I want to invest. If it is what I think it is, it's a license of print money. he's already in the Alberta area so there you go and he's Canadian does he have $100 million

because that's what we're going to need he may not he might know other people he knows some people all right I love this one good fine two good fines back to back for Gurdley from generational equity

Josh would you do quality of earnings on a Canadian business or do we have to find a fake Canadian quality of earnings firm. So I have, I'll say the vast majority of our deals are U.S.-based. I have done Canadian and even some other overseas deals. Like obviously I'm not as familiar with their tax returns, and I don't speak a lot or any really foreign languages. But sometimes people still want me to look at the numbers and stuff.

So we kind of take it on a case-by-case scenario. Canada doesn't scare me as much as something. That's obviously another language. Yeah, I like it. All right. If you like this one, we have 400 more like it. I don't, I did mention, we did another dealer, you know, a long time ago, I think.

But there are, whatever niche you're into, we've got an episode on it on acqueu and on.com. You can also get on our email list. We will email you written summaries of the episodes if you're not always an audio person, but want to keep up on businesses we're reviewing. You get text-based summaries of the episodes on our email list, acu-un.anon.com. Thanks for joining us. Josh, where can people find you on the internet? Yeah, reach out to me on LinkedIn, or you can look up my website, tonnesonaccountingervices.com.

We have a contact form. Fill that out. I'll reply back to you normally, Sam her next day. Awesome. And Heather, I don't think you're this a little bit above SBA size, but if people have an SBA size deal, where can they find you?

And you can't get an SBA loan in Canada either. But I'm at vizocamp.net, V-I-S-O-C-A-P-Net. Sign up for our Tuesday webinar and get started with us if you're going to use an SBA loan to acquire a business. Awesome. Well, thanks for listening,

and we will see you on the next episode of Acquisitions Anonymous.