Can a small electrical crew support a viable business?
Illustrative case · Small licensed residential electrical service and installation crew: one master/owner plus one journeyman and one van · Texas, United States; local authority, address and service radius not selected
Explore this business · Overview
A small electrical contractor sells reliable diagnosis and completed installation work, but earns money only when paid crew time becomes collectible jobs. This Texas case uses an already licensed master electrician owner, one licensed journeyman and one van. Its opening funding is $144,996, including $50,000 available cash. Base-case Year 1 EBITDA is $11,614 after paid owner labor, while accounting profit before income tax is −$14,730. These are modeled results, not industry averages.
Observed SBA industry evidence
Lending activity in the broader category
NAICS 238210 covers electrical contractors across formats and sizes. It does not isolate this case: Small licensed residential electrical service and installation crew: one master/owner plus one journeyman and one van. Loan records do not establish local demand, costs or operating performance.
These are positive-amount loan records selected by approval fiscal year and PIF, CHGOFF or EXEMPT status at the stated snapshot. They are not unique firms, search volumes, approval probabilities or loans disbursed during that year.
Read this industry’s amounts, terms, lenders and outcomes.
Source: SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA files, snapshot 30 June 2026. Recomputed from original records on 1 October 2026. FY2025 is the most recent complete fiscal year in these files. Definitions and exclusions.
Choose the scope before the customer promise
The offering is residential fault investigation, fixture and circuit work, and small installations in existing homes. The scheduling unit is a two-person crew-clock hour: both electricians are present, so one clock hour uses two person-hours. This is deliberately a conservative staffing case. An owner dispatching a second independent crew or performing most service calls alone needs a different capacity and vehicle model.
| Included in the case | Requires a separate case or quote |
|---|---|
| Existing-home service and limited installations | Whole-home new construction, long general-contractor contracts and major commercial work |
| One master/owner and one journeyman | Apprentice recruitment, extra supervision or another crew |
| One new van and modest stock/storage | Property purchase, large workshop conversion or fleet expansion |
| Customer-authorized lump-sum jobs | Unpriced concealed defects, utility upgrades or emergency coverage commitments |
Licensing precedes staffing. TDLR requires an electrical contractor to employ a master electrician of record; the owner may fill that role. The case assumes the owner already qualifies and the journeyman already holds the appropriate individual license. It does not promise that buying equipment creates a licensed contractor. Master qualification and journeyman qualification have distinct experience and exam requirements.
The constraint is paid time, not the number of leads
The roster buys 160 crew-clock hours, or 320 person-hours, each month. The base time budget reserves 32.0 clock hours for travel and 16.0 for procurement, quoting and preparation. Callback hours equal 4.0% of billed hours. The resulting sales capacity is 107.7 billed crew-clock hours, not the entire paid shift.
With base prices and job mix, the steady cash threshold is 80.9 billed hours per month before working-capital movements and income taxes. That corresponds to roughly 24.3 service-call equivalents and 4.0 small installation equivalents at the assumed mix. Fractional equivalents describe a planning average; a dispatch schedule must use actual integer jobs and their durations.
A local demand study should record inbound enquiries, accepted estimates, billed duration, cancellations, return visits and collection dates. Capacity says what the crew can deliver; it does not prove customers will buy those hours.
Read the cash conclusion before scaling
Base Year 1 revenue is $300,441. The working owner receives $76,800 gross modeled compensation; it is already an expense in EBITDA. Cash closes Year 1 at $41,928 and reaches its opening trough of $20,830 in month 5. The base case therefore has a positive reserve path under its assumptions, even though Year 1 accounting profit is negative.
The downside uses slower sales, longer trips, more rework, weaker prices and slower installation collections. It runs out of cash in month 4 and accumulates an unfunded 60-month requirement of $488,229. This is evidence to change the operating plan, not a proposed loan size. Adding reserve alone cannot repair low contribution or recover hours lost to travel.
SBA records describe the broad code
The exact-code SBA pool contains 647 included records from approval FY2023, 782 from FY2024 and 808 from FY2025, totaling 2,237. These are PIF, CHGOFF and EXEMPT records as of June 30, 2026, not approvals for this exact residential crew or disbursements made during those fiscal years. The official extracts do not contain this case’s rent, wages, prices or profit margin.
NAICS 238210 also spans other electrical and wiring activities. The Census 2017 definition includes installation, maintenance, repair and other wiring formats. Recent code descriptions and counts are separately verified against SBA. Use the guides below to price the specific work before treating a broad loan statistic as relevant finance evidence.
Use the guide that answers the next commitment
Start with the opening-cost schedule if the van and tools are not quoted. Use unit economics when the dispatch day looks busy but too few hours are billed. Read profitability to distinguish the owner’s wage, EBITDA and cash after debt. Financing then connects verified uses, available owner funds and repayment timing.
Before committing, verify the license of record, insurer terms, the actual service territory and each permitting authority. TDLR’s compliance guide explains local inspection responsibilities; a state license does not eliminate job-level permits. A full business-plan example remains a later owner-generated deliverable. This edition supplies five linked planning guides.
Explore this business
This edition contains five planning guides. A full business-plan example for this format is not yet published.
Sources and scope
- SBA Loan: illustrative planning-case methodology · Checked 2026-10-04 · Declared authoring assumptions, not supplier prices, observed demand, loan offers or a real company.
- Texas TDLR: new electrical contractor license · Checked 2026-10-04 · Texas statewide contractor license, master of record, annual license and liability limits; not project-specific approval.
- Texas TDLR: master electrician license · Checked 2026-10-04 · Initial master qualification; case assumes an already licensed owner.
- Texas TDLR: journeyman electrician license · Checked 2026-10-04 · Journeyman qualification and exam eligibility distinction.
- Texas TDLR: compliance guide · Checked 2026-10-04 · State code edition, local inspections, invoice/vehicle license identification.
- Texas TDLR: electrical licensing FAQ · Checked 2026-10-04 · State licenses, exemptions and city permit authority; no blanket permit exemption.
- SBA: official 7(a)/504 FOIA extracts · Checked 2026-10-04 · June 30, 2026 extract; FY approval cohorts, PIF/CHGOFF/EXEMPT status records.
- Census Bureau: 2017 NAICS definition reference · Checked 2026-10-04 · 2017 definition, page 55 (PDF index 54): 238210 includes electrical and other wiring installation formats; recent code set is bound separately to SBA source descriptions.
- BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Electricians · Checked 2026-10-04 · US May 2025 employee wages, all electrician license levels; not Texas licensed-master compensation.
- Ford Pro: Transit and E-Transit fact sheet · Checked 2026-10-04 · Published 2026 new cargo-van starting MSRP and destination; exact payload/body/upfit not quoted.