When the cash is tight and the lender has stopped smiling.
Turnaround and restructuring CFO work for asset-heavy companies — distressed trucking fleets, construction firms and manufacturers in the $2M–$50M revenue range. Thirteen-week cash, a restructured debt stack, and reporting your bank will actually accept.
What a turnaround CFO does for a distressed company
A turnaround CFO takes over the financial controls of a company in distress: building a thirteen-week cash forecast, mapping and renegotiating the full debt stack, cutting the losses that are structural rather than seasonal, and rebuilding the reporting the lender needs to stay at the table. Blue Collar CFOs does that work for trucking fleets, construction companies and manufacturers between roughly $2M and $50M in revenue — the band that AlixPartners and FTI will never take, and that a local CPA is not equipped to handle.
Nobody calls a turnaround CFO early.
By the time we get the call it has usually been going for eighteen months. The owner has been funding payroll off the factoring advance. Two pieces of equipment are behind. There is a merchant cash advance in there that nobody wants to talk about. The bank has moved the file to special assets and the relationship manager who used to answer the phone has been replaced by someone with a checklist.
Here is what we have learned: the business is usually not the problem. The structure is. Debt that was priced for a good year. A cost base built for a revenue number that no longer exists. Customers who were never profitable and nobody measured. And a reporting package that tells the lender nothing, which is why the lender is afraid.
Fear is what kills these companies. Information is what stops the fear.
Signals it is time
- You are deciding weekly which vendors get paid
- The factoring advance is funding payroll
- Your file has moved to special assets or workout
- A covenant has been breached or waived more than once
- There is a merchant cash advance in the stack
- Equipment notes are past due or in default
- Insurance repriced after a loss year and nobody remodelled
- You cannot say which customers are profitable
Stabilize. Restructure. Rebuild.
Stabilize the cash
A thirteen-week cash flow built from the bank account, not the P&L. Every obligation mapped: senior debt, equipment notes, factoring, advances, tax, personal guarantees. A triage list of what gets paid, renegotiated or stopped this week. You stop guessing on day fourteen.
Restructure the stack
Lender conversations we run with you, not for show. Re-amortization, forbearance, refinancing the expensive paper, replacing a punishing factoring line with a properly priced facility, and unwinding advances that are eating the business alive.
Rebuild the reporting
Unit economics down to the truck, the crew or the machine. Customer-level profitability. A monthly package the lender trusts. This is what turns a workout file back into a normal credit — and what makes the company sellable later.
We have sat on the other side of this table.
Our team has underwritten these companies, financed them, protected assets, run repossessions, syndicated paper and rescued businesses that everyone else had written off.
That matters for one reason: when we walk into a lender meeting, we know what the credit committee is actually worried about, what a forbearance realistically looks like, and which requests get granted. We are not learning your lender's language on your dime.
And when a trucking client needs the fleet valued honestly, we value it the way a liquidator would — because that is the number the lender is already using.
Straight answers.
When is it too late for a turnaround?
It is rarely the losses that end it — it is running out of cash while you are still arguing about the losses. If payroll is funded, the lender is still talking to you and the core service still has customers who want it, there is usually a path. If the equipment is already being repossessed, the insurance has lapsed and the receivables are fully encumbered, the honest answer may be a sale or an orderly wind-down, and we will say that rather than bill you to watch it end.
What happens in the first two weeks?
A thirteen-week cash flow, built bottom-up from the bank account rather than from the P&L. A complete picture of the debt stack including every equipment note, factoring line, merchant advance and personal guarantee. A revenue and margin breakdown by customer, lane or job. Then a triage list: what gets paid, what gets renegotiated, what gets stopped this week.
Will you talk to my bank?
Yes, and that is usually the point. Lenders do not lose patience because a company had a bad quarter. They lose patience because nobody can tell them what is happening or when it ends. We rebuild the reporting into the format the special assets team actually needs and we sit in the calls.
Do you do this for trucking companies specifically?
It is the work we do most. Aging fleets, factoring lines at punishing rates, insurance premiums that reprice after a bad loss year, driver turnover, and rate environments that move faster than the cost structure. The national restructuring firms do not serve a $2M to $20M fleet. We do.
What if the company should be sold instead of fixed?
Then we tell you, and we can run that process. A company too far gone to fix is often a legitimate acquisition target for somebody else at the right price. We work both sides of that line, which is precisely why we will not pretend a rescue is available when it is not.
If payroll is the conversation this week, call today.
We would rather take the call early and tell you it is fixable than take it late and tell you it is not.