A reasonable core range for estimated pre-tax owner-operator benefit is about $21,000 to $155,000 annually, with a base scenario near $63,000. The 2026 Aire Serv Franchise Disclosure Document reports Gross Sales, not profit or owner compensation, so these figures are independent estimates rather than franchisor-reported earnings. They combine 2025 Aire Serv sales cohorts with an official U.S. specialty-trade margin benchmark and disclosed franchise fees. If the FDD’s potential local-marketing requirement is fully incremental to benchmark advertising, the modeled range shifts to roughly a $25,000 loss through a $48,000 benefit. Confidence is LIMITED because no same-brand unit-level profit data are disclosed.
Data basis
- Legal franchisor
- Aire Serv SPV LLC
- Current disclosure
- 2026 U.S. Franchise Disclosure Document, issued April 1, 2026
- Item 19 status
- Official 2025 Average and Median Annual Gross Sales; no operating profit, EBITDA, net income, cash flow, or owner compensation disclosed
- Applicable population
- 172 full-year reporting franchised businesses out of 229 U.S. businesses operating at December 31, 2025; no company-owned outlets
- External benchmarks
- IRS 2023 nonfarm sole proprietorship income statements for Specialty Trade Contractors; BLS May 2023 wage data for General and Operations Managers in NAICS 238220
- Date checked
- July 14, 2026
Median for all 172 reporting businesses in the 2025 Item 19 population.
The average is 65% above the median, showing substantial upward skew.
172 reporting businesses divided by 229 U.S. businesses operating at year-end.
License fee is 5%–7% by prior-year sales tier, plus a 2% MAP fee.
2023 net income less deficit divided by business receipts for nonfarm sole proprietors.
BLS NAICS 238220 median hourly wage of $50.49 multiplied by 2,080 hours; payroll burden excluded.
What does Aire Serv Item 19 actually measure?
Item 19 measures annual Gross Sales, not what an owner keeps. The official table covers January 1 through December 31, 2025 and defines Gross Sales broadly as revenue and receipts connected with the Aire Serv business, after limited exclusions such as sales taxes, authorized refunds, rebates, discounts, and approved Excluded Services. It does not disclose cost of equipment, technician payroll, vehicles, insurance, facilities, advertising, franchise fees, operating profit, owner salary, distributions, or debt service.
| Item 19 group | Median Gross Sales | Average Gross Sales | Businesses |
|---|---|---|---|
| First quartile | $3,243,435 | $4,093,185 | 43 |
| Second quartile | $1,445,073 | $1,414,426 | 43 |
| Third quartile | $571,423 | $576,772 | 43 |
| Fourth quartile | $143,401 | $161,062 | 43 |
| All reporting businesses | $944,801 | $1,561,361 | 172 |
The reporting population also has survivorship and maturity filters. Item 19 excludes 45 businesses opened during or after January 2025, 11 businesses affected by transfers that did not operate and report for the full year, one business that reported no sales, and 24 businesses that closed during the reporting period. Item 20 shows 229 franchised U.S. outlets and zero company-owned outlets at the end of 2025. These exclusions make the table useful for full-year operating businesses, but less representative of startup, transition, and closure outcomes. Source: 2026 Aire Serv FDD, Item 19, pages 72–74; Item 20, pages 74 onward.
How is the owner-operator earnings range calculated?
The model applies a government specialty-trade net-income benchmark to three official Aire Serv revenue anchors, then subtracts the applicable standard license fee and 2% MAP fee. Conservative, Base, and Upside are analytical cases, not probabilities and not FDD-reported profit levels.
The IRS 2023 income statement for Specialty Trade Contractors reports $40.481 billion of net income less deficit on $257.750 billion of business receipts, a derived 15.7056% margin. Because Schedule C sole proprietors cannot deduct a salary paid to themselves, this benchmark can include both business residual and compensation for the owner’s work. The Conservative and Upside cases apply a transparent minus/plus 3 percentage-point sensitivity around that benchmark. Calculations use unrounded inputs and are rounded only at publication.
| Scenario and revenue anchor | Benchmark margin | License + MAP | Estimated owner-operator benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative: third-quartile median, $571,423 | 12.7% | 9.0% | $21,175 |
| Base: all-business median, $944,801 | 15.7% | 9.0% | $63,355 |
| Upside: second-quartile median, $1,445,073 | 18.7% | 8.0% | $154,704 |
Pre-tax benefit combines residual operating income and the value of work performed by the owner.
Interpretation: Revenue scale and operating margin both matter. The Upside case is not a forecast; it uses the official second-quartile median sales figure and a margin sensitivity 3 percentage points above the IRS benchmark.
Sources: 2026 Aire Serv FDD, Item 19, pages 72–74; Item 6, pages 18–30; IRS 2023 Nonfarm Sole Proprietorships, Table 2. Figures are independent calculations.
What expenses are included or excluded?
The model is pre-tax and before acquisition or vehicle-loan principal payments. The IRS margin is an all-in industry measure that includes aggregate deductions such as labor, contract labor, vehicles, insurance, rent, supplies, advertising, interest, and depreciation. To avoid double-counting, the model does not separately subtract local marketing, software, call-center, facility, or vehicle expenses; it assumes normal amounts are embedded in the benchmark. It separately subtracts the Aire Serv license and MAP fees because those are franchise-specific percentage charges.
No separate owner salary is deducted. The result is therefore “owner-operator benefit,” not pure passive business profit.
Excluded from the core owner-operator cases and added separately in the manager-run analysis.
Included only to the extent reflected in the aggregate IRS benchmark; buyer-specific financing and capital spending are not modeled.
Excluded. Personal income taxes depend on entity structure, jurisdiction, deductions, and owner circumstances.
How does active ownership change Aire Serv earnings?
Active ownership can change the result by roughly the cost of a qualified operating manager. Item 15 states that an individual owner must directly perform or supervise the business unless Aire Serv consents otherwise. If the owner is not personally supervising, a trained bona fide manager must directly supervise. The modeled owner-operator benefit therefore includes the economic value of management work performed by the owner.
For a manager-run sensitivity, this analysis subtracts $105,019: the BLS May 2023 median hourly wage of $50.49 for General and Operations Managers in Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors, annualized at 2,080 hours. It excludes payroll taxes, benefits, bonuses, and recruiting costs, so the manager-run residual is optimistic where those costs apply.
The same operating scenarios are shown before and after a $105,019 manager-wage proxy.
Interpretation: At the lower and central sales anchors, the broad manager-wage proxy exceeds modeled owner-operator benefit. A manager-run structure becomes positive only in the Upside case, before payroll burden and any stricter marketing-cost treatment.
Sources: 2026 Aire Serv FDD, Item 15, pages 65–66; BLS May 2023 NAICS 238220 wage estimates. Manager-run figures are independent calculations.
Which disclosed fees can move owner earnings most?
The percentage-based license, MAP, and local-marketing obligations are the largest disclosed recurring variables in this model. Fixed technology and call-center charges also matter, especially at lower sales levels or with multiple technicians, but their total depends on user counts and booked appointments.
| Recurring obligation | 2026 FDD amount | Treatment in this analysis |
|---|---|---|
| Standard license fee | 7% below $1 million prior-year Gross Sales; 6% from $1 million to $1,999,999; 5% at $2 million or more, subject to minimum fees | Subtracted explicitly by scenario |
| MAP fee | 2% of standard Gross Sales | Subtracted explicitly |
| Local marketing | Potential mature-business requirement: greater of $50,000 or 8% of prior-year Gross Sales; first 12 months currently $60,000 and second 12 months $75,000 | Assumed embedded in the industry margin; separately stress-tested because actual required spending may be much higher |
| Technology and ServiceTitan | $189.95 monthly technology-package fee; ServiceTitan currently $228–$241 monthly per service-professional user for the first five users, with lower per-user tiers at scale | Assumed embedded in broad operating expenses; actual seat count must be verified |
| Call center | $349.99–$449.99 monthly plus $25 per booked appointment | Assumed embedded in broad operating expenses; appointment volume is unknown |
| Annual Reunion | Currently up to $1,000 per person, plus travel, lodging, meals, and other expenses | Not isolated from the aggregate expense benchmark |
Source: 2026 Aire Serv FDD, Item 6, pages 18–30. Item 7 startup investment is not deducted from annual revenue because initial investment is not an annual operating expense.
What should a buyer verify before relying on this range?
The buyer must verify actual unit-level expenses because the FDD does not disclose an Aire Serv profit-and-loss statement. The widest uncertainty is whether a specific business can achieve the modeled specialty-trade margin after technician labor, equipment and materials, vehicle costs, local marketing, technology, call-center charges, manager compensation, and local occupancy costs.
- Request the written substantiation for Item 19 and confirm how Gross Sales were extracted, corrected, and tested.
- Ask Aire Serv franchisees in the second, third, and fourth sales quartiles for normalized cost-of-sales, field-labor, office-labor, vehicle, insurance, facility, and local-marketing percentages.
- Separate owner salary, owner draws, distributions, retained cash, depreciation, interest, and principal payments rather than accepting one undefined “income” number.
- Confirm whether the owner works full time, directly supervises, sells jobs, dispatches technicians, or replaces a paid manager.
- Verify the actual local-marketing requirement, Local Marketing Group contribution, ServiceTitan user count, booked-call volume, and required facility for the proposed territory.
- Review the 45 newly opened businesses, 24 closures, and transfer population separately; the Item 19 full-year cohort does not show their economics.
- Model financing outside operating earnings with the buyer’s actual amount financed, interest rate, term, collateral, and vehicle obligations.
What is the strongest defensible Aire Serv owner-earnings range?
The strongest defensible core estimate is approximately $21,000 to $155,000 of annual pre-tax owner-operator benefit, with a base case near $63,000. It is scenario-based, not official owner-income data. A strict treatment of the FDD’s potential local-marketing requirement shifts the modeled cases to roughly a $25,000 loss through a $48,000 benefit, while a manager-run structure produces about a $84,000 loss through a $50,000 residual before payroll burden.
The most important earnings drivers are Gross Sales, technician and material economics, local-marketing burden, and whether the owner replaces a paid operating manager. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand unit-level expense and profit data. A buyer should reconcile Item 19 substantiation with complete franchisee profit-and-loss statements and interviews that explicitly identify owner labor, manager pay, recurring fees, debt service, and business maturity.