Sector guide · Earthmoving, plant & civil
Selling an earthmoving business in Queensland
There is no QBCC licence class for earthmoving in Queensland, no operator licence for an excavator, and TMR prequalification does not transfer with a sale. What a buyer prices instead is the plant register, the finance sitting behind every machine, and the work still to be done.
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How do you sell an earthmoving business in Queensland?
An earthmoving or civil business in Queensland sells as a share sale or an asset sale. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission publishes no licence class for earthworks, roads or bridges, so the regulatory value sits in Transport and Main Roads prequalification, competency records and environmental authorities. A buyer searches the Personal Property Securities Register, established under the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth), against both your entity and every machine.
- The question that decides everything is whether the business is worth more than its gear.
- A business that is really you plus machines gets priced close to the market value of the fleet, because that is what a buyer is actually getting.
- Contracted work, prequalifications and a skilled crew that stays earn a going concern price well above the auction value of the plant.
- Book values in this industry are routinely wrong in both directions, so the depreciation schedule is not an appraisal.
The short answer, in six lines
Everything below is expanded further down the page, with the register or the regulator named so you can check it yourself.
At a glance
- Who buys these businesses
- Larger Queensland civil contractors buying fleet, prequalification and secured work. Plant hire groups, interstate contractors entering the Queensland market, and your own site managers and family successors also buy.
- The licence position
- QBCC publishes no licence class for earthmoving, bulk excavation, civil engineering, roads or bridges. Drainage is licensable at any value with no dollar threshold, and other building work is licensable above $3,300.
- What transfers on a sale
- In a share sale the entity survives, so a QBCC licence and TMR prequalification stay put, subject to immediate notification and review. In an asset sale prequalification, conditional registrations and heavy vehicle permits do not carry across at all.
- What a buyer checks first
- The plant register against two PPSR searches, one against your ACN or ABN and one against every machine serial number. Then the payout figure behind each machine, and your TMR prequalification status, which TMR publishes.
- Realistic timeframe
- Six to nine months from appraisal to settlement. Longer where financier consent is needed on hire purchase or leased plant, where TMR has to review prequalification after a change of ownership, or where an environmental authority is in play.
- What decides the price
- Normalised earnings, the value of secured work still to be performed, and fleet condition measured by service meter hours and major component life. Utilisation and the split between wet hire and dry hire move the number as much as the multiple does.
The question every earthmoving owner should ask first
Is my business worth more than my gear? That single question decides how your sale should be run, and many owners have never had it answered honestly.
If the business is really you plus machines, with the work won on your name and your phone, then a buyer will price it close to the market value of the fleet, because that is what they are actually getting. If the business has contracted work, prequalifications, a skilled crew that stays and clients who deal with the company rather than with you personally, it earns a going concern price above the value of the plant, sometimes well above.
The good news is that the gap between those two positions is buildable. Everything in this guide is about moving your business from the first camp to the second, because that move is where earthmoving owners create the most value per hour of effort they will ever put into the business.
One more thing up front, from someone who spent years around auction ramps: your fleet is worth what the market pays for it, not what the depreciation schedule says. Book values in this industry are routinely wrong in both directions, and pricing a sale off them is how owners either scare buyers away or leave real money on the table. Getting honest market values across the register is step one of any serious exit conversation.
The auctioneers will give you a number. It is the floor, not the price.
An auction converts the fleet and stops there. The forward work, the operators, the client relationships, the prequalifications and the reputation you built on time and on grade are all worth exactly nothing on the day. Find out what the whole thing is worth before you decide.
A broker who understands how plant and equipment are valued
Before broking, I held senior roles in industrial auction and remarketing, working with plant, equipment and transport values. I have seen thousands of machines cross the ramp, and I know the difference between a book value and a market value because I have watched the market set them.
That matters when your business goes to sale, because your fleet will be priced honestly from day one, your enterprise value will be argued from evidence, and I can talk to trade buyers about your gear, your utilisation and your forward book in their own language. The approach goes directly to the buyers who want the capability: expanding civil contractors, interstate players buying their way into this market, and investors backing an operator. None of them see a document until they have proved they can fund it.
Not in this sector?
I sell businesses in every industry. These nine are the ones I have run, built or worked in, which means I can talk to a buyer in their own language from the first meeting. That is an advantage where it applies, not a limit where it does not.
E-commerce & retailRan a national online window furnishings retailer, and co-founded and sold a toy business built to several million a year.
Transport & logisticsTwenty years around trucks, trailers and fleets, and what a financier looks at before your profit.
You are reading this oneEarthmoving, plant & civilIndustrial auction and remarketing. Machine hours, condition and the difference between the two.
Construction & buildingThe QBCC licence question comes before the price question, every single time.
Mining services & supplyPrequalification status and safety record price straight into the multiple in this sector.
Window furnishings & interiorsRan one. Custom manufacture, measure and install, and where the revenue ceiling actually sits.
Toy, gift & hobby retailCo-founded one with my wife, built it across store and online, and sold it. I have sat on your side of this.
Turf farmsMy father in law built a turf farm and sold it to his competitors. A sector few brokers have been near.
OH&S consultancy & trainingCertificate IV in Training and Assessment, and safety training systems built from scratch. Including RTO risk.Nine published seller guides, and the one you are on is marked. Every industry outside the nine gets the same process, the same buyer research and the same discipline. View all seller guides.
Who wrote this, and how he learned what plant is worth
Tony Pope spent eight years selling heavy equipment, trucks and machinery through global unreserved auctions, promoted from territory manager to regional sales manager. He ran business to business sales across mining, construction, transport and logistics, against annual targets above $90 million. He then spent two years as national sales and operations manager for the Australian market leader in automotive and industrial asset remarketing. He ran national auction and fleet disposal across nine sites and multiple asset classes, on a portfolio above $150 million. He had nine direct reports and a team of more than 60. He has appraised, catalogued and sold this machinery for a living, in a format where the market answers in seconds and there is nowhere to hide a tired undercarriage. That is the part of an earthmoving sale he knows from the inside: what a machine is actually worth, which buyers turn up for it, and how service records and component life move a number.
The rest of this page is traced. The licensing, prequalification, PPSR and environmental material here comes from primary sources, and every source is listed below so you can check it yourself. That means QBCC, Transport and Main Roads, the Personal Property Securities Register, WorkSafe Queensland, the Australian Taxation Office, Business Queensland and the ABS. Where the research could not confirm something against a primary source, this page says so rather than filling the gap. Tony Pope holds Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence 4963575 and is a member of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers.
Questions people ask
3 of the 23 answered in full on the questions page for this topic.
Do I need a QBCC licence to run an earthmoving business in Queensland?
There is no QBCC licence class for earthmoving, bulk excavation, civil engineering, roads or bridges. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission publishes eight builder and builder restricted classes, and none of them is a civil class. That is a finding, not a gap.
Does TMR prequalification transfer when I sell the business?
No. Prequalification attaches to the assessed entity and to the people Transport and Main Roads assessed, so it is not an asset you can hand over. An asset sale does not carry it across at all, because the acquiring entity is a different contractor.
Why does a buyer run two different PPSR searches over my fleet?
Because serial number searching alone does not clear an earthmoving fleet. PPSR treats motor vehicles, aircraft, watercraft and some intellectual property as serial numbered property, and plant that fails the motor vehicle test is non-serial-numbered collateral that can only be found by searching the grantor.
More questions earthmoving and civil owners ask, all 23 of them.
Go deeper
The long form, where it belongs
The full detail is on the pages below, each on its own page.
Check it yourself12 primary sources
Primary sources, none of them affiliated with me and none of them endorsing this site. Where anything here differs from an official source, the official source is right.
The terms a buyer, a financier and a valuer will use10 definitions
Plain definitions of the words a buyer, a financier or a regulator will use. Where a term has a statutory anchor, it is named.
The official government register of security interests in personal property, being debts or other obligations secured by personal property. It is established under the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth) and searched at ppsr.gov.au. Every search produces a certificate you can keep as proof of whether a security interest was registered at that time.
A secured party holds an interest in personal property of a grantor, such as a borrower, as security for a loan or other obligation. The grantor is the individual or organisation that owns or has an interest in the property. Collateral is the personal property the security interest is attached to.
Property that PPSR requires or permits to be described in a registration by serial number, including motor vehicles, aircraft, watercraft and some intellectual property. A motor vehicle is anything designed to be propelled on land, capable of travelling more than 10km/h with power over 200W, or capable of being towed at that speed. PPSR states that a bobcat may not be regarded as a motor vehicle, while an excavator, harvester or backhoe might be.
A security interest where the money lent or credit given funded all or part of the purchase price of the property. PPSR states a PMSI is likely to go to the front of the queue even if it was registered last. Registration is due before the grantor takes possession for inventory, and within 15 days of possession for non-inventory.
A finance structure where you own the machine from the outset and the financier takes a security interest over it, registered on the PPSR. The machine sits on your balance sheet and your depreciation schedule, and conveys to a buyer once the financier is paid out and the registration is released.
A lease or bailment for at least two years, or for an indefinite period, for agreements entered into on or after 20 May 2017. A PPS lease is registrable on the PPSR, so plant standing in your yard can appear on the register as another party’s collateral.
Assessment by Transport and Main Roads under the National Prequalification System for Civil (Road and Bridge) Construction Contracts, on technical and managerial expertise, financial capacity and previous performance. TMR uses Roadworks R1 to R5, Bridgeworks B1 to B4 and Asphalt A1 to A4, with financial levels from F1 at $1 million to F150 PLUS unlimited, inclusive of GST.
Industry practice for documenting that a plant operator is competent on a specific machine. It is not a defined statutory requirement in the WorkSafe Queensland material. It gives effect to the duty on a person conducting a business or undertaking with management or control of plant to ensure operators are competent and adequately trained, instructed and supervised.
The recorded service hours figure used for maintenance scheduling and valuation, as distinct from the physical hour meter on the machine. The two diverge when a meter is replaced or fails, so SMU is the figure of record and any meter change must be documented. This is industry usage, not a statutory term.
The environmentally relevant activity that catches quarrying, pit operation and material screening, prescribed under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld) and listed in schedule 2 of the Environmental Protection Regulation 2019. Extracting or screening 5,000 tonnes or more of material in a year is the entry threshold. Environmental authorities are administered by the Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation.
Ask what it is worth
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