Northeastern Pennsylvania has turned into one of the busiest logistics corridors on the East Coast, and most local business owners still think of it as background noise.
Amazon, Chewy, CVS Caremark, Walmart and Home Depot all run distribution centers along the I-81 corridor through Luzerne and Lackawanna counties. Since 2014, the region has absorbed nearly 60 million square feet of industrial space, with more than 70 companies now occupying at least 250,000 square feet each. Class A industrial space here still leases for roughly $8-9 per square foot, compared to $18-19.50 in Central and Northern New Jersey — a cost gap wide enough that tenants aren’t going anywhere once they’ve built out a facility.
If you run a commercial cleaning, janitorial, or facility services company in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area, that boom is already sitting inside your revenue.
Most owners just haven’t priced it that way yet.
The Boom Sitting Outside Your Office
There are 31,800 people employed in transportation and warehousing in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton metro area alone, per BLS data cited by the region’s largest industrial developer. That’s not a seasonal spike. It’s a workforce that shows up to buildings that need to be cleaned, maintained, and serviced every single day, year-round, regardless of what retail or restaurant traffic looks like that month.
The broader I-78/I-81 corridor backs this up. CBRE’s Q1 2026 industrial market data shows the corridor posting its strongest quarter of vacancy decline since mid-2022, with the Scranton submarket alone landing a 749,000-square-foot lease from a single tenant. This is not a market that’s cooling off.
Here’s the part that matters for an exit: a facility services contract tied to one of these distribution centers behaves nothing like a contract with a retail strip mall or a small medical office.
Two Kinds of Revenue, Two Different Buyers
Say you run a $1.6M cleaning company with $370K in SDE — the seller’s discretionary earnings figure buyers use to price a business like this, essentially your true owner profit after add-backs.
$880K of that revenue (55%) comes from retail storefronts and small offices around Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. All month-to-month. All cancelable with 30 days’ notice.
The other $720K (45%) comes from three-year facility services agreements with two distribution centers near CenterPoint Commerce & Trade Park. One of those contracts already renewed once, so you’re six years into a relationship, not three.
Pull comps for commercial cleaning and janitorial businesses and you’ll typically land in a 2.6x-2.9x SDE range, putting this company around $960K to $1.07M on paper.
But a buyer’s underwriting doesn’t treat that $370K as one number. It treats it as two.
The month-to-month retail book gets priced like what it is — revenue that could walk in 30 days if a landlord changes vendors or a tenant closes up shop. The warehouse contracts get priced differently: multi-year terms, a demonstrated renewal, and tenants whose lease economics make relocation unlikely for years.
Run the math on a blended basis and that contracted 45% can justify pushing the multiple to 3.0x-3.1x instead of the market’s default range — the difference between $1.07M and roughly $1.13M-$1.15M on the same revenue and the same SDE.
That’s real money left on the table by owners who present their book of business as one undifferentiated number.
What to Do Before You List
Buyers will find the contract split anyway. It shows up in the client list, the AR aging, and the actual signed agreements during diligence. The only question is whether you control that story or let a buyer discover it cold.
A few things worth doing before you go to market:
Break out revenue by contract type and remaining term in your financials, not just by client name. A buyer’s lender wants to see this distinction as much as the buyer does.
Document renewal history. A contract that’s been renewed once is worth more to a buyer than an identical contract in year one, even though the paperwork looks the same on its face.
If your agreements name the tenant or property (a distribution center operator, a known regional employer), make sure that’s visible in your CIM. Buyers underwrite risk partly on brand and covenant strength, not just contract length.
Don’t let the retail book drag down how the whole company gets perceived. A mixed portfolio isn’t a weakness — but only if you can show the buyer exactly which piece is which.
The Takeaway
Revenue and SDE get you in the conversation. Contract quality is what moves the multiple.
If you’re running a facility services business anywhere near the I-81 corridor and a meaningful chunk of your book comes from warehouse or distribution center clients, that’s not just stable revenue — it’s revenue backed by tenants who’ve already sunk millions into buildings they’re not walking away from. Buyers will pay for that durability once they can see it clearly.
The owners who leave money on the table aren’t the ones with weak books. They’re the ones who never separated the strong parts of their book from the shaky parts before a buyer did it for them.
If you’re a few years out from selling a cleaning, landscaping, or facility services business in Northeastern Pennsylvania and you’re curious what your business is worth given who your actual clients are, that’s a conversation worth having before you list — not after the first offer comes in lower than you expected.