John Hubbard Grew Express Custom Trailers EBITDA From $750K to $2M Without Chasing Revenue

The Setup John Hubbard acquired Express Custom Trailers in 2021, a specialty trailer fabrication shop generating about $750,000 in EBITDA at close. He had already told the acquisition story on an earlier Acquiring Minds appearance. This second conversation is the follow-up operators actually want: what happened after the honeymoon, and whether to sell now that the numbers have moved. Trailer fab is a classic searcher target. Custom orders, real machinery, sticky B2B customers, and a labor force that does not scale linearly with demand. The kind of business where operator judgment compounds and where the wrong growth move destroys margin. The Deal Hubbard bought a profitable shop with room to expand margin rather than a turnaround. Specifics of purchase price and financing structure were not the focus of this episode (covered in the prior interview), but the relevant context is the entry EBITDA: $750K. That is the baseline he measures every decision against. Operating Moves Hubbard's central bet was to chase EBITDA, not revenue. In practice that meant: - Refusing orders that penciled as revenue wins but margin losses. - Holding headcount flat or near-flat while profit roughly tripled. - Pricing discipline on custom configurations rather than chasing volume tiers. - Benchmarking obsessively against a larger competitor who produces 4x the revenue with 6x the staff yet lands at the same absolute EBITDA. That competitor comparison is the punchline of his operating thesis. More revenue bought with more labor is not more business. It is the same profit at higher risk, with more people to manage, more working capital tied up, and more ways for a down year to turn ugly. Where They Are Now By late 2023, EBITDA was approaching $2 million. The business crossed what Hubbard and the podcast treat as a threshold: roughly $2M EBITDA is where lower-middle-market private equity starts paying real multiples. Below that, you sell to another searcher or a strategic at 3-4x. Above it, multiples can step up materially, which is why the same dollar of EBITDA is worth more once you cross. So the question on the table in this episode is no longer operational. It is transactional. Does he sell now, run it another two or three years, or hold indefinitely? Operating Lessons - Pick a profit target before a revenue target. Revenue goals drag in low-margin work; profit goals force the no. - Benchmark labor efficiency against a larger competitor, not your own prior year. If a 4x-revenue peer has 6x your headcount at your EBITDA, you are the better business. - Track EBITDA per employee as a core KPI alongside gross margin. It surfaces the hidden cost of every new hire. - Understand the multiple staircase before you scale. Growth from $750K to $1.5M EBITDA may not change your multiple. Growth from $1.5M to $2M+ can. - Price on configuration complexity, not list. Custom manufacturing rewards operators who charge for variance and punish those who do not. - Treat headcount adds as acquisitions. Each one has a payback period,...