A reasonable pre-tax scenario range for one established U.S. Cornwell mobile tool dealership is approximately $19,000 to $89,000 per year, with a modeled base case near $44,000. This is not an official Cornwell profit figure. The 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document reports 2025 dealer revenue and collections, but it does not report expenses, net income, EBITDA, owner compensation, or cash flow.
The earnings figures below are independent analytical scenarios, not an Item 19 financial performance representation by Cornwell Quality Tools Company. They combine identified 2026 FDD facts with a separately identified IRS industry benchmark and explicit margin sensitivity assumptions. Actual results can differ materially because of territory quality, route maturity, product mix, collections, bad debt, truck costs, fuel, insurance, financing, owner involvement, and execution.
Legal franchisor: Cornwell Quality Tools Company. FDD: issued April 1, 2026. Item 19 status: official 2025 revenue and sales data for full-year U.S. franchised dealers, but no profit or owner-income disclosure. Primary population: 699 dealers in business for all of 2025 that reported at least 48 weeks for Section 19-A. Benchmark: IRS Statistics of Income, tax year 2023, nonfarm sole proprietorships classified as building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers. Checked: July 19, 2026.
The matching 2026 FDD was not located on a verified franchise-controlled public page, so FDD references are provided in plain text by Item and page rather than as a clickable document link.
What does Cornwell's strongest official evidence actually measure?
Officially, Cornwell reports dealer revenue and weekly sales—not owner earnings. For the 2025 U.S. mobile dealership population, Item 19 Section 19-A reports “Total Completed Business,” while Section 19-B reports weekly product sales. The two measures are not interchangeable, and neither deducts cost of goods, truck expenses, bad debt, financing costs, or other operating expenses.
“Total Completed Business” means cash or revenue received during 2025 from product sales, including cash sales, Time Payment collections, Tech-Credit credits, and sales tax collected. Weekly “Sales” means the gross selling price of products sold, whether collected immediately or not, and excludes sales tax. Because the annual distribution is available only for Total Completed Business, that measure is the revenue anchor used in the scenario model. Cornwell Quality Tools Company 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 57–61.
2025 Total Completed Business for the central cohort of 233 full-year reporting dealers.
U.S. franchised dealers operating all year and reporting at least 48 weeks.
Net income less deficit divided by business receipts for the selected 2023 sole-proprietor industry group.
Middle-third median revenue multiplied by the unadjusted IRS benchmark ratio.
2025 BLS median wage for nontechnical wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives in wholesale trade.
| 2025 dealer cohort | Dealers | Median Total Completed Business | Reported range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom third | 233 | $414,762.62 | $49,046.03–$510,073.47 |
| Middle third | 233 | $579,847.97 | $510,787.35–$661,370.73 |
| Top third | 233 | $838,393.83 | $662,877.66–$2,063,369.34 |
The middle-third median of $579,847.97 is cash collected, including sales tax, not the owner's salary or business profit. Item 19 explicitly says that costs and expenses must be deducted and that Cornwell cannot project dealer net income. The FTC's guidance on evaluating Item 19 claims likewise emphasizes source definitions, population coverage, assumptions, and written substantiation.
How was the annual earnings range calculated?
The estimated range applies explicit operating-margin assumptions to Cornwell's three official 2025 revenue cohorts. The revenue anchors are the bottom-, middle-, and top-third medians from Item 19. The base margin is a derived 7.65% ratio from IRS tax-year 2023 data; conservative and upside margins are three percentage points below and above that benchmark.
The IRS table reports $10.681 billion of aggregate business receipts and $817.418 million of net income less deficit for nonfarm sole proprietorships classified as building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers. Dividing net income less deficit by receipts produces 7.653%. This is an imperfect proxy: a Cornwell mobile dealership has a route-based direct-sales model, customer credit exposure, franchise purchase requirements, and vehicle costs that the broad IRS category does not isolate. The benchmark is therefore used as a sensitivity center, not as a claim about Cornwell dealers.
- Estimated owner-operator benefit
- Cash-oriented pre-tax business income after modeled operating expenses, including an industry-level allowance for interest and depreciation, but before personal income taxes and before financing principal payments.
- Revenue anchors
- Official 2025 Item 19 medians for the bottom, middle, and top thirds of 699 full-year reporting U.S. dealerships.
- Margin assumptions
- 4.65%, 7.65%, and 10.65%. The ±3 percentage-point spread is an editorial sensitivity assumption, not FDD-reported performance.
- Recurring franchise fees
- The 2026 FDD reports no royalty, advertising, cooperative advertising, transfer, lease, or required additional-training fee. Computer-related fees may reach approximately $100 per month when the optional payment-processing vendor is used. Because the IRS ratio is all-in, these costs are not subtracted a second time.
| Scenario | FDD revenue anchor | Modeled margin | Estimated pre-tax owner-operator benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | $414,762.62 | 4.65% | $19,300 |
| Base | $579,847.97 | 7.65% | $44,400 |
| Upside | $838,393.83 | 10.65% | $89,300 |
How much does the model produce in each scenario?
Estimated annual pre-tax owner-operator benefit for one established mobile dealership.
Interpretation: Both route revenue and operating margin drive the spread. The top-third revenue anchor alone does not create the upside result; the upside also assumes a margin three percentage points above the IRS benchmark.
Sources: Cornwell Quality Tools Company 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 57–61; IRS nonfarm sole proprietorship statistics, Table 1, tax year 2023. Calculations use full precision and are rounded to the nearest $100 for display.
How does full-time owner involvement change the meaning of the result?
Cornwell's model is owner-operated, so the scenario result is not passive business profit. Item 15 requires the owner and principal Operator to engage full time, use best efforts, and personally participate in direct operation. The FDD says an owner may not hire an employee or independent contractor instead of satisfying that personal full-time obligation. Cornwell Quality Tools Company 2026 FDD, Item 15, pp. 49–50.
That requirement means estimated owner-operator benefit combines two economic components: compensation for the owner's sales, driving, collections, merchandising, and route-management labor; and any residual return on business capital and risk. The BLS 2025 wholesale-trade wage data report a $70,280 median annual wage for nontechnical wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives. The wage is not a perfect match and is not a Cornwell expense forecast, but it provides a transparent labor-value comparison.
What remains after assigning a market value to the owner's labor?
The economic residual subtracts a $70,280 labor-value benchmark from each cash-oriented owner-operator benefit scenario.
Interpretation: The conservative and base cases do not cover the selected market wage benchmark after valuing the owner's required full-time labor. Only the upside case produces a positive residual after that economic charge. This does not mean the business writes a payroll check to the owner; it separates labor compensation from return on capital.
Sources: Cornwell Quality Tools Company 2026 FDD, Item 15, pp. 49–50; BLS Wholesale Trade: NAICS 42, 2025 occupational wages. The labor comparison is analytical and does not describe a permitted manager-run Cornwell model.
An owner who compares the $44,400 base scenario with a salaried job should not treat the full $44,400 as passive investment return. Under the franchise agreement, the owner is supplying the full-time labor that produces the route's sales and collections. The official Cornwell explanation of the tool-truck model also describes product margins, customer credit, collections, warranties, and promotions as core operating activities.
Why is the evidence confidence limited?
Confidence is limited because the FDD supplies a strong revenue distribution but no same-brand expense or profit data. The selected IRS margin is official government evidence, yet it covers a broad sole-proprietor retail industry rather than route-based Cornwell dealers, and the FDD's annual Total Completed Business measure includes sales tax and collection timing that may not align with IRS business receipts.
- Product cost and gross margin are undisclosed. Item 19 does not provide dealer cost of goods, discounts, rebates, warranty economics, or product-mix margins.
- Route maturity matters. Item 19 excludes dealers that started or terminated during 2025 and notes that some included dealers had operated for many years with established customer bases.
- Collections can diverge from sales. Total Completed Business reflects cash and Tech-Credit credits received, while weekly Sales records gross selling price even when cash has not yet been collected.
- Vehicle and credit exposure can dominate cash flow. Truck payments, fuel, maintenance, insurance, customer bad debt, card fees, and interest vary by dealer and territory.
- The benchmark includes owner labor. Sole-proprietor net income generally combines labor compensation and business return because a proprietor's own wage is not deducted as payroll.
- Debt principal is outside the model. The scenario benchmark includes an industry-level interest burden, but principal payments, down payments, and Cornwell-specific financing schedules can materially reduce distributable cash.
Item 20 adds important population context. The system had 793 franchised outlets at the start of 2025 and 811 at year-end, with 114 openings, 14 terminations, and 82 outlets that ceased operations for other reasons. Item 19 separately states that 93 dealers closed or ceased operations during the 2025 measurement period and excludes dealers that started or terminated during the year. These exclusions make the published revenue cohort more representative of continuing, full-year routes than of a first-year buyer's experience. Cornwell Quality Tools Company 2026 FDD, Item 20, pp. 62–72; Item 19, p. 60.
What should a prospective owner verify before relying on the range?
A buyer should replace the broad margin proxy with dealer-level evidence from comparable Cornwell routes. The most useful verification is written substantiation for Item 19 plus normalized income statements, route-aging data, and financing schedules from current and former franchisees in territories similar to the proposed market.
- Request Item 19 substantiation and confirm how sales tax, Tech-Credit credits, Time Payment collections, returns, discounts, and bad debt are recorded.
- Ask several current dealers for cost of goods, gross margin, truck payment, fuel, insurance, card fees, repairs, software, interest, write-offs, and annual capital spending.
- Separate owner draws from business profit and identify whether financial statements include any owner or family payroll.
- Compare routes by years in operation, weekly stops, active customers, average collection period, territory density, and product mix.
- Review former-dealer interviews and Item 20 exits, not only continuing dealers represented in the full-year Item 19 cohort.
- Model debt principal separately using the buyer's actual truck, inventory, reserve, and working-capital financing terms.
What is the strongest defensible earnings conclusion?
The strongest defensible range is approximately $19,000 to $89,000 in annual pre-tax owner-operator benefit for one established Cornwell mobile dealership, with a base scenario near $44,000. It is scenario-based, not an official Item 19 earnings result. The largest earnings driver is the combination of route revenue and product-level operating margin; the largest unresolved uncertainty is that Cornwell does not disclose dealer expenses or net income.
The owner-role requirement is decisive. A Cornwell owner must personally operate the dealership full time, so the modeled benefit includes compensation for labor as well as any return on capital. Before treating any part of the range as durable business profit, a buyer should verify Item 19 substantiation, compare route-level expense records, examine Item 20 exits, and interview current and former dealers whose territory density, route maturity, customer credit profile, and financing structure resemble the proposed dealership.
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