Why Route Acquisitions Go Wrong
Most deals fall apart the same way. The seller quotes you a monthly revenue number. You multiply it by whatever multiple you have heard is standard. You write a check. Then three months in, six customers cancel, two were on verbal agreements, and one pool turns out to be a forty-five minute drive from the rest of the route.
The multiple is not the problem. The inputs are the problem. Garbage in, garbage out.
Start With Verified Monthly Revenue, Not What the Seller Says
Ask for twelve months of bank deposits, not invoices. Invoices show what was billed. Deposits show what was collected. Those are not always the same number, especially on routes with a lot of deferred billing or customers who pay slow.
Then go line by line on the customer list. You want to know: monthly rate per pool, how long each customer has been on the route, and whether there is a signed service agreement or just a handshake deal. A customer paying $110 a month who has been on the route for four years and has a signed contract is worth more than a customer paying $135 a month who started eight months ago and never signed anything.
If the seller will not give you the customer list before a signed letter of intent, that is fine. But you should get it before you hand over any money.
The Multiple Conversation
Pool routes in most markets trade somewhere between eight and twelve times monthly gross revenue. Where a specific route lands in that range depends on a few things: how tight the geography is, whether there are signed agreements, average tenure of the customers, and what the seller is including in the deal.
A worked example. Say the route does $8,500 gross per month across 55 pools. At ten times monthly, you are paying $85,000. That sounds clean. But now look at what you are actually buying.
If 30 of those 55 pools are on contracts and 25 are month-to-month, you have real exposure. Month-to-month customers cancel when they meet a new tech. Budget for losing 10 to 15 percent of the uncontracted base in the first 90 days. That is three or four pools at $110 each, or $330 to $440 in monthly revenue gone. At a ten times multiple, you just paid $3,300 to $4,400 for customers who left before you finished paying off the route.
Adjust the multiple accordingly. Month-to-month heavy routes should trade closer to eight times, not ten. Routes with signed two-year agreements, tight geography, and long customer tenure can justify eleven or twelve.
Look Hard at the Geography Before Anything Else
Pull up the customer addresses on a map before you fall in love with the revenue number. A 55-pool route that is clustered in three neighborhoods is a different business than a 55-pool route spread across a 25-mile radius.
Here is why it matters. Say the clustered route averages an 11-minute drive between stops and 17 minutes on site per pool. That is 28 minutes per pool, or about 26 pools in a day at that pace. You can realistically run 55 pools with two full days of service plus a short third day. You have time for repairs and new installs.
The spread-out route at the same stop count might average 22 minutes of drive time between pools. Now you are at 39 minutes per pool. To do 55 pools you need closer to three and a half solid days of windshield and wrench time. Your chemical costs are the same. Your fuel costs are not. Neither is your energy at the end of the week.
Tight geography also makes the route easier to add to if you grow. Spread-out geography makes it harder to hand off to a second tech later without doubling your drive time problem.
Chemical and Supply Costs Are Not Fixed
Sellers often tell you the route runs at a certain margin. Ask for actual chemical receipts from the past three months. A pool doing $110 a month might cost $4.80 in chlorine and stabilizer on a good week in February, and $9 or $10 during a July algae season with heavy bather load. Those numbers add up across 55 pools.
Also ask whether the seller does their own repairs or subs them out. If they sub out every filter cleaning and salt cell replacement, the gross revenue looks clean but you are also not seeing what a tech who handles their own repairs could earn on top of the service fees. That is useful to know when you are modeling your own version of the route.
Non-Competes and Transition Help
Get a non-compete in writing. It should cover the geographic area of the route and run at least 24 months. Without it, there is nothing stopping the seller from opening a new route and calling your customers six months after the sale.
Two or three weeks of joint service visits, where the seller introduces you to each customer, will cut your early churn significantly. Some sellers resist this. Insist on it anyway, or price in the churn risk if they will not do it.
Track the Route from Day One
Once you close, you need to know immediately if customers are dropping off, where your time is going, and whether the revenue matches what you paid for. If you are managing the new route on a whiteboard or a spreadsheet, you will not catch problems fast enough to act on them.
This is where software actually earns its place. getLucci was built for exactly this size of operation and is free for your first 50 pools, which covers most acquisition scenarios while you are still getting your footing on the new accounts.