Pueblo is a working city. It grew up around the Colorado Fuel and Iron mill on the south side, which for many years was the largest private employer in Colorado. The 2020 census counted 111,876 people here, which made Pueblo the ninth largest city in Colorado. It sits where Fountain Creek meets the Arkansas River, a little over 100 miles south of Denver on I-25.
If you own a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, welding or landscaping company in Pueblo and you are thinking about selling, Kent & Tamarack can help. We work for owners of small trade and service companies. The talk is plain and the process stays private.
What keeps Pueblo's trades busy
The steel mill still runs. The steel market collapsed in the 1980s and CF&I went bankrupt in 1990. Oregon Steel bought what was left and ran it as Rocky Mountain Steel Mills, and Evraz bought it in 2007. In July 2025 Atlas Holdings bought it, with the rest of Evraz North America, and the mill now runs as Rocky Mountain Steel Mills under a new parent, Orion Steel. Atlas calls it the largest solar-powered steel mill in the world.
Next to it, the wind tower plant that Vestas built in the industrial park now belongs to CS Wind. Those two plants, and the businesses that supply them, need welders, electricians, millwrights, fabricators and maintenance crews.
The largest employers in the city are not all industrial, though. The city's own 2023 financial report put Parkview Medical Center at the top, followed by the state mental health hospital, Pueblo School District 60, Colorado State University Pueblo, Walmart and Pueblo County. Parkview alone counted about 4,300 workers that year. Hospitals, schools and a university keep large buildings that need boilers, chillers, roofs, electrical service and grounds work all year.
Then there is farming. Pueblo chile grows on farms east of the city, around the St. Charles Mesa, Vineland and Avondale, and some farm families there have worked the same ground for generations. Farms, packing sheds and roadside stands need pumps, wiring, refrigeration and equipment repair.
So a Pueblo trade company may have three kinds of customers at once: homeowners, farms, and big institutional or industrial accounts. Each one looks different to a buyer.
When one big account carries the company
Many Pueblo owners have a contract or a long relationship with one large customer. That could be the mill, a contractor at the wind tower plant, a school district or a hospital. It pays well and it pays steadily. In a sale, it is also the first thing a buyer asks about.
A buyer worries about two things. What if the account leaves after the owner does? What if the plant cuts back? Pueblo has seen hard years before. The mill once employed thousands more people than it does now, and the city knows what a downturn looks like.
You can answer those worries before they come up:
- Show several years of work with the account, not just the best year.
- Name the people on your crew who deal with that customer day to day.
- Bring the contract or the purchase orders, and know when they renew.
- Show what the rest of the company earns without that account.
A company with one large customer can still sell for a fair price. The buyer needs to see that the relationship belongs to the company and not only to you.
Family companies and long memories
Pueblo has a lot of family businesses. Some trade companies here are on their second or third owner from the same family. That history is worth something. Customers call you because their parents called your father.
The hard part is that family companies run on memory. Prices sit in the owner's head, the best customers have the owner's cell number, and the books are kept the way they were kept in 1995. A buyer cannot pay for what they cannot see.
Before a sale, we help you write down how the company really runs: who prices jobs, which customers buy every year, which suppliers give you terms, and what each truck and tool is worth. You keep running the company while we do this, and nobody outside needs to know why.
Who buys a company in Pueblo
The buyer pool here is smaller than on the north end of I-25. It is still real. Buyers for Pueblo trade companies come from a few directions.
A competitor in town may want your techs, since skilled people are hard to hire. A company from Colorado Springs or Denver may want a base on the south end. An employee or a family member may want to take over and pay part of the price over time. Someone moving to southern Colorado may want to buy a working company instead of starting from nothing.
Each kind of buyer pays in a different way and wants something different from you after the sale. We line up the offers side by side so you can compare more than the headline price.
What your Pueblo company is worth
Nobody can tell you a number before looking at the books, and you should be careful of anyone who does. A fair business valuation in Pueblo looks at what the company earns for an owner in a normal year, how much work repeats, the crew, the equipment and the records. We give you an honest range with the reasons behind it, and we tell you which changes would move it.
How it works and how to reach us
There are four steps: a private first call, an honest look at value, a quiet search for the right buyer, and a close done with your own accountant and attorney. The four steps are laid out here. If you run an HVAC company, our page on selling an HVAC business goes deeper on what buyers check in that trade.
Call (983) 900-6537. The founder picks up. If you live out west of town, see the Pueblo West page, and for the wider region see Colorado Springs and Southern Colorado.