How Much Does a Craters & Freighters Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, it discloses no sales, operating profit, EBITDA, net income, cash flow, owner compensation, or other earnings measure. Item 19, page 38, says Craters & Freighters Franchise Company does not make representations about future franchisee performance or the past financial performance of company-owned or franchised outlets. Therefore, no official annual owner-income figure can be calculated from Item 19.

That absence matters. Gross Sales, Adjusted Gross Sales, business profit, owner salary, distributions, and after-tax take-home pay are separate measures. The $1,000,000 figure used in this analysis appears in Attachment B as the Minimum Performance Standard for years 4–15. The Franchise Agreement also warns that meeting the standard does not establish successful market penetration or business success. It cannot be relabeled as average unit volume.

Item 20 provides system context rather than earnings evidence. The system ended 2025 with 64 franchised outlets and one company-owned outlet. The company-owned outlet was acquired in Rhode Island during 2025, so it does not provide a broad or mature company-operated comparison. Item 20 also reports three franchisee-to-franchisee transfers in 2025 and states that no current or former franchisees had signed confidentiality clauses restricting discussion of their experience during the prior three fiscal years.

The estimate applies three explicit revenue and margin scenarios to one mature unit. Revenue is anchored to the $1,000,000 years 4–15 Minimum Performance Standard. Because the FDD supplies no sales distribution, the conservative and upside revenue assumptions are 80% and 120% of that threshold: $800,000, $1,000,000, and $1,200,000. This spread is analytical, not FDD-reported.

The margin anchor comes from the IRS nonfarm sole proprietorship statistics. For tax year 2023, “Support activities for transportation (including motor vehicle towing)” reported $8.834 billion of business receipts and $810.090 million of net income less deficit across 99,527 returns. Dividing the compatible totals produces a 9.1698% aggregate ratio. The conservative and upside margins are that benchmark minus or plus 3 percentage points.

The IRS category is broader than custom crating and freight forwarding, consists of sole proprietorship tax returns rather than Craters & Freighters franchise P&Ls, and does not identify comparable warehouse size, territory, maturity, or franchise-fee structure. The 9.1698% ratio is therefore used as an all-in sensitivity proxy, with the scenario assumption that recurring franchise-fee pressure is absorbed within the modeled margin; FDD fees are not deducted again in the earnings formula. That assumption is not verifiable from the IRS table and is a major reason for the Limited confidence label.

Owner involvement is potentially the largest difference between owner benefit and manager-run business profit. Item 15, page 29, requires the owner to participate directly in full-time management unless an approved Designated Manager runs day-to-day operations. The FDD also requires a Lead Salesperson. This is not structured as a passive-income model.

The owner-operator figures above include both residual business economics and the value of management work performed by the owner. To test a manager-run structure, the analysis subtracts the BLS median wage for transportation, storage, and distribution managers: $102,010 in May 2024. The BLS occupation covers managers who coordinate transportation, warehousing, distribution, staff, budgets, and movement of goods, making it a reasonable role proxy rather than a Craters & Freighters salary requirement.

The result should be read as a sensitivity, not a forecast. The subtraction uses wage only; employer payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, benefits, recruiting, training, and coverage during vacancies are omitted. A fully loaded manager cost would be higher.

The royalty floor is the most important disclosed fee sensitivity at lower revenue. Item 6 requires the greater of 5% of Adjusted Gross Sales or the Minimum Monthly Royalty Fee. Attachment B sets the years 4–15 minimum at $4,167 per month, or $50,004 annually. At $800,000 of revenue, that floor equals an effective royalty rate of about 6.25%, rather than 5%.

Other current recurring obligations include a 1% Marketing Fund Contribution, an Individual Advertising Expense equal to the greater of $6,000 or 1% of prior-year Adjusted Gross Sales up to $18,000, a $500 monthly Technology Fee, and packers legal liability insurance of $125–$500 per month. The franchisor reserves the right to raise the Marketing Fund Contribution to 2% and the Technology Fee to as much as $750 per month. The table uses the current rates. Cargo insurance is variable and cannot be calculated from the FDD because it depends on cargo volume, declared value, current rates, and loss ratio.

Steady-state assumption: prior-year Adjusted Gross Sales is assumed to equal scenario-year revenue when calculating the Individual Advertising Expense. Included: royalty, current 1% Marketing Fund Contribution, required Individual Advertising Expense, current Technology Fee, and the stated fixed range for packers legal liability insurance. Excluded: variable cargo insurance, ordinary commercial insurance outside the program, cooperative advertising beyond amounts credited toward individual advertising, materials, carrier costs, warehouse rent, payroll, vehicles, maintenance, utilities, professional fees, and other operating expenses.

Confidence is limited because the central revenue figure is a contractual standard and the margin comes from a broad government tax category, not same-brand operating statements. The range is useful for testing whether a proposed territory and operating plan can support the buyer’s income objective, but it is not evidence that a typical Craters & Freighters unit earns within the range.

• Revenue uncertainty: The FDD reports no average, median, quartile, range, mature-unit cohort, reporting percentage, or percentage of outlets reaching $1,000,000. The 80%/100%/120% spread is editorial.
• Margin comparability: IRS “Support activities for transportation” includes businesses with materially different services, asset intensity, owner roles, geography, and scale. It is not a custom-crating franchise cohort.
• Tax-accounting measure: IRS net income less deficit is not EBITDA, store-level operating profit, free cash flow, or owner distributions. It may reflect depreciation and business interest deductions reported on Schedule C.
• Owner labor: Sole proprietors do not deduct a salary paid to themselves on Schedule C. The scenario therefore combines residual economics with compensation for the owner’s work and is labeled owner-operator benefit.
• Capital and financing: Replacement vehicles, equipment, major warehouse work, and other capital expenditures are not separately modeled. Debt principal is excluded; financing interest may be embedded in the IRS aggregate but is not matched to a buyer’s loan.
• Personal taxes: No after-tax take-home estimate is published. Federal, state, local, payroll, and entity-level tax outcomes depend on structure and owner circumstances.

The FDD’s Item 7 initial investment of $207,000–$390,000 is not an annual expense and was not subtracted from revenue. It is opening-capital context only. The official Craters & Freighters franchise ownership page currently displays the same franchise-fee and initial-capital ranges, but it does not publish owner earnings.

A buyer should replace broad assumptions with written, unit-level evidence wherever possible. The FTC’s consumer guide to buying a franchise emphasizes evaluating the disclosure document and potential earnings carefully, while the FTC Franchise Rule explains the required disclosure framework.

• Ask the franchisor for written Item 19 substantiation and confirm that no salesperson has supplied revenue, profit, owner salary, or “typical earnings” claims outside the current disclosure.
• Interview current franchisees across multiple sales levels and ages. Request revenue, gross margin, material cost, outsourced freight cost, payroll, rent, insurance, vehicle, bad-debt, and maintenance ranges.
• Separate owner-operated units from units using a Designated Manager. Ask how many hours the owner works, whether the owner leads sales, and what manager compensation and employer burden are actually paid.
• Verify how many outlets achieved the years 4–15 $1,000,000 Minimum Performance Standard, how long they took to reach it, and what happened to territories that missed it.
• Confirm local warehouse rent for at least 5,000 square feet, loading requirements, box-truck economics, labor availability, insurance costs, and customer concentration in the proposed territory.
• Obtain lender terms in writing and model interest, principal, working-capital needs, and capital replacement separately from operating owner benefit.
• Reconcile any seller-provided P&L to Adjusted Gross Sales and the Item 6 fee definitions. Confirm that national-account work, pass-through freight, insurance proceeds, refunds, and taxes are classified consistently.

For a full-time owner-operator, the strongest defensible planning range is approximately $49,000–$146,000 per mature unit, with a $91,700 base analytical scenario. It is scenario-based, not official. The most important earnings driver is the combination of revenue and labor-adjusted operating margin; owner involvement materially changes the result because a market-priced manager can absorb the modeled residual.

The largest unresolved uncertainty is actual same-brand unit economics: the 2026 Item 19 provides no sales or profit population, and the $1,000,000 Minimum Performance Standard is not an average or median. Before making a decision, a buyer should verify written Item 19 substantiation, the percentage and age of units reaching the performance standard, complete franchisee P&Ls, owner hours, Designated Manager costs, and territory-specific warehouse, labor, carrier, and insurance expenses.