e all know that hiring has been tight — to say the least.

Especially in the trades and blue collar industries.

Finding good people is a top challenge for entrepreneurs who've acquired businesses in those areas.

So it may have occurred to you that a good business to buy is actually upstream from blue collar businesses themselves, right at the source of supply for talent:

I'm talking about trade schools, or similar education businesses.

Well today's guests did buy such a business, a CDL school.

That is, a training business for aspiring truckers to get a commercial driver's license.

Tyrel Sulzer and Bob Boniface bought TransTech, a $7m revenue CDL school with locations across North Carolina.

I was very interested in this business.

First, I wanted to understand if there was any merit to this idea that trade schools could be strategically interesting businesses to buy.

And I wanted to understand trucking, an industry that's always held a naive romance for me — the big rigs & open roads.

So we go deep on that, as well as:

  • the story of the acquisition, of course
  • why Tyrel & Bob decided to do a traditional search fund
  • why each of them was committed to buying a blue collar business
  • whether to partner when searching, and what the partner dating process might look like
  • and, what British Columbia-native Tyrel would tell his compatriots about the opportunity for search in Canada

Challenges in the world of trucking notwithstanding, I'm excited for this business and others like it.

Please enjoy this conversation with Tyrel Sulzer & Bob Boniface, owners of TransTech.