How Much Does a Customs Brokerage Owner Make? $180K Pay Target
Under the researched assumptions, a customs brokerage owner can plan around a $180,000 salary plus possible pre-tax distributions if profit remains after reserves In the first year, the model shows 150 active customers, about $223M in revenue, and about $762K in operating profit, or a 343% operating margin That means pre-reserve owner economics could reach about $942K if the owner takes the modeled salary and all operating profit This is a planning estimate, not guaranteed income, and it depends on customer volume, billing mix, staff cost, software fees, compliance workload, and reinvestment needs
Owner income$942KNet margin343%Revenue for target pay$840KBusiness difficultyHard
Want the six biggest income drivers?
1
Active Accounts
150
At 150 first-year customers and $800 CAC, every new importer has to turn into steady billable work fast.
2
Entry Volume
8.5-15h
Billable hours per active customer rise from 8.5 to 15.0, so more filing volume lifts revenue if rework stays low.
3
Fee Rate
$85-$190
Rates across clearance and consulting set the base on each job, so pricing lifts income fast when costs hold.
4
Service Mix
35%-85%
Mix shifting into consulting and document work raises revenue per customer and helps margin.
5
Payroll Load
$545K
First-year payroll is about $545K, so productivity has to turn headcount into billable output.
6
Overhead Control
$22K/mo
Fixed overhead runs about $22K a month, and keeping it tight protects Month 8 breakeven and take-home.
Want to test your owner pay target?
Owner income calculator
Estimate owner take-home and target-pay gap from revenue, margin, costs, reserves, and target pay.
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Planning note: This is a researched planning estimate, not guaranteed salary, tax advice, or owner distribution advice. The source model uses active customers and billable hours, so the gap shown is directional, not a promise.
Want to check owner income in the Customs Brokerage model?
A Customs Brokerage can earn a very thin true fee margin: on the provided numbers, $223M of first-year revenue and about $762K of operating profit equals roughly 0.34% operating margin, so the real test is separating pass-through charges from brokerage fee revenue. For startup-cost context, see What Is The Estimated Cost To Open And Launch Your Customs Brokerage Business?
Cost stack
Direct and variable costs equal 240% of revenue.
Software is 80%.
Government filing and processing fees are 50%.
Commissions and training add 80% and 30%.
Profit pressure
Fixed overhead is $264K a year.
Payroll is $545K.
Marketing is $120K.
Small cost drift on $223M moves income fast.
How much revenue does a customs brokerage need?
For Customs Brokerage, the first-year revenue target should be set against owner pay, fixed cost, and reserve policy, not vanity growth. In the provided model, $180K CEO salary is already included, first-year fixed cost is $929K, annual break-even revenue is about $122M, and modeled first-year revenue is $223M, leaving about $762K operating profit before taxes, debt, and reserves. Each extra $100K of pre-tax distribution needs about $132K of added revenue at the same contribution margin.
Revenue driver
$180K CEO pay is included
$929K fixed cost base
$122M break-even revenue
$223M modeled first-year revenue
Profit and reserve math
$762K operating profit shown
Taxes, debt, reserves are excluded
$100K distribution needs $132K revenue
Reserve policy changes cash needs fast
Do you need to be a licensed customs broker to own a brokerage?
If you’re starting Customs Brokerage, don’t treat ownership and the qualifying broker role as the same question; verify the setup with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and qualified counsel. The money side is clearer: if year 1 includes 2 Licensed Customs Broker FTEs at $95,000 each, payroll is $190,000, and a single $95,000 hire needs about $125,000 of revenue at a 76.0% contribution margin to cover its cost.
License and ownership
Verify rules with CBP and counsel.
Ownership and broker role can differ.
Check who is the qualifying broker.
Do not assume one setup fits all.
Revenue and staffing
Year 1 staffing: 2 broker FTEs.
Year 5 staffing: 6 broker FTEs.
One $95K hire needs $125K revenue.
Hiring helps capacity, but cuts take-home if volume is thin.
Key Takeaways
Break-even lands around 82 active customers.
Revenue grows fastest when repeat importers stay active.
Service mix matters more than raw entry volume.
Payroll and compliance can erase owner income quickly.
Compare customs brokerage owner income scenarios
Owner income scenarios
Owner income shifts fast as active customers, service mix, and staffing scale. These scenarios show the early ramp, staffed base, and scaled case so you can size pay, reserves, and risk.
Compares owner pay and upside across ramp, base, and scale.
Scenario
Low CaseEarly ramp
Base CaseStaffed base
High CaseScaled upside
Launch model
Owner income stays in a thin early-ramp band while the customer book is still small.
Owner income tracks the staffed operating model with a wider customer base and steadier service mix.
Owner income follows a scaled case with a much larger customer base and deeper specialized work.
Typical setup
About 150 active customers, $223M revenue, $762K operating profit, 343% operating margin, and $180K CEO pay.
About 390 active customers, $840M revenue, about $508M operating profit, 604% margin, and $180K CEO pay.
About 1,194 active customers, $4730M revenue, about $3621M operating profit, 766% margin, and $180K CEO pay.
Cost drivers
150 active customers
$180K CEO pay
early-ramp reserves
collection timing
compliance load
390 active customers
$180K CEO pay
mixed service volume
staffed operations
reserve discipline
1,194 active customers
specialized consulting mix
higher operating profit
tighter compliance
retention risk
Owner income rangeBefore owner reserves
$180K-$942KRamp income
$180KBase income
$180K+Upside income
Best fit
Use this if you want a conservative stress test of the first staffed phase.
Use this as the normal planning case after the core team is in place.
Use this to test upside if volume, compliance, and collections all hold.
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Planning note: These scenario ranges are researched planning assumptions, not guaranteed earnings, salary promises, tax advice, or distributions.
Customs Brokerage Core Six Income Drivers
Active Importer Accounts
Active Importer Accounts
More active importer accounts make customs brokerage income steadier because repeat clients create billable hours, document work, and compliance consulting. At $800 CAC, $120K of first-year marketing adds 150 customers; year two at $180K and $750 CAC adds 240 more, bringing the modeled base to 390 accounts.
Here’s the quick math: break-even is about 82 active customers at first-year unit economics. The catch is quality matters more than raw leads, because one repeat importer can produce steadier work than several one-off shippers.
Measure Retention and CAC
Track active accounts, CAC, billable hours per client, and retention by importer type. The key inputs are new customers, repeat shipment rate, document volume, and compliance consults, since those drive owner income more than lead count.
150 first-year customers
240 second-year adds
82 customer break-even
Repeat work beats one-offs
When retention slips, cash flow gets choppy fast. If active accounts stay above break-even and the account mix keeps generating recurring filing and advisory work, the owner has a cleaner path to pay themselves.
Average Fee Per Customs Entry
Average Fee Per Customs Entry
When the fee per entry reflects real complexity, owner pay rises because more of each filing turns into true service revenue. In the model, hourly rates move from $85 to $105 for customs clearance, $150 to $190 for compliance consulting, $75 to $95 for duty tax advancement, and $65 to $85 for document management.
First-year modeled revenue is about $1,236 per active customer per month. Here’s the key split: brokerage fees support profit, but duties, taxes, freight, and other pass-through charges do not. If the fee blends those items together, cash may look bigger than margin, and the owner’s take-home gets squeezed.
Price True Service Work
Track each entry by service type, billed hours, and pass-through amount. The clean test is simple: did the entry earn fee income, or just move cash for customs duties and freight? Only the first one improves gross margin and gives room for salary or profit draw.
Use the rates you can defend by complexity, not just volume. If compliance work takes more review time, price it closer to $190 per hour than $150; if document handling is heavy, keep it near $85 per hour. That protects margin when entry counts rise but staff time rises too.
Customs Brokerage Service Mix
Service Mix
When your work shifts from basic clearance to higher-value advisory, the same client can generate more income. In this model, consulting carries the top hourly rate at $150 in year 1 and $190 in year 5, so a mix with more consulting can lift blended revenue per client and support owner pay without adding freight forwarding. The model also shows customs clearance at 850% in year 1 and 650% by year 5, while consulting rises from 350% to 750%.
Inputs that matter are active importer accounts, billable hours, monthly entries, and the share of hours by service line. Here’s the quick math: if the mix shifts toward consulting and document work, revenue per account can rise above the first-year benchmark of about $1,236 per active customer per month. What this estimate hides is rework risk: if staffing or review time lags, margin gets eaten by delays and extra labor.
Raise the blended hourly rate
Track revenue by service line, not just by client. Measure consulting hours, document management hours, and customs clearance hours each month, then compare the blended rate to the line rates of $85 to $105 for clearance, $150 to $190 for consulting, $65 to $85 for document management, and $75 to $95 for duty tax advancement. If consulting share rises, owner income should rise too, as long as compliance stays tight.
Price consulting separately from clearance.
Upsell existing importer accounts first.
Keep pass-through charges out of revenue.
Watch rework and review time weekly.
Staff Productivity And Payroll
Payroll and Staff Load
This driver covers CEO pay, licensed brokers, a software developer, and an operations coordinator. First-year payroll is $545K, or about $45.4K per month. With headcount rising from 20 FTE to 60 FTE by year five, profit only improves if each hire adds more entries, billable work, or compliance coverage than it costs.
The key inputs are revenue per employee, entries per employee, rework, and overtime. Two brokers at $95K each, a developer at $110K, and an operations coordinator at $65K only help owner income when volume keeps pace. One clean rule: payroll should grow slower than productive workload.
Track Labor Before It Eats Profit
Build a monthly labor dashboard and watch revenue per employee, entries per employee, overtime hours, and rework rate. If those numbers flatten while payroll rises, delay the next hire. Hiring should follow booked volume, not hope, because idle capacity turns into lower owner distributions fast.
Set a revenue-per-employee floor.
Track entries per broker monthly.
Cap overtime before adding staff.
Review rework before every hire.
Compliance, Software, And Overhead Control
Compliance Cost Control
This driver covers software licensing, government filing and processing fees, insurance, legal and accounting, regulatory compliance and licensing, and cloud and IT. The model says software is 80% of revenue in year one and falls to 60% by year five; government fees move from 50% to 30%. If both sit on the same revenue base, they can eat more than 100% of revenue before payroll.
The listed fixed items also total $55K/month ($25K insurance, $3K legal and accounting, $15K compliance and licensing, $12K cloud and IT), even though the model states $22K. That gap matters because it changes break-even and how much cash the owner can safely pay themselves. One clean file is cheaper than one correction cycle.
Measure Cost Per Clean Entry
Track compliance cost as a % of service revenue, not total billed pass-through. Use rework per entry, error rate, and days to close a file as the control panel. The inputs that matter are service revenue, software cost, government fees, fixed overhead, and rework volume.
Separate service fees from pass-throughs.
Auto-check documents before filing.
Review errors by customer and staff.
Cut rework before adding headcount.
If software stays near 80% of revenue or filing fees stay near 50%, owner pay gets squeezed fast. Better records and automation should show up as lower rework and a cleaner cash cycle, not just fewer clicks.
Monthly Customs Entries
Monthly Customs Entries
Monthly customs entries are the workload driver that turns importer accounts into billable work. More entries can lift revenue, but only if each filing still converts into paid billable hours instead of unpaid rework. In the model, average billable hours per active customer rise from 85 in year one to 150 by year five, so volume matters most when it is matched to pricing and staffing.
The owner should watch customs clearance hours, which rise from 45 to 65, because that is where margin gets squeezed first. If entry count grows faster than review capacity, compliance errors and overtime can eat the extra income. More filings do not help if the team cannot clear them cleanly.
Track Entries Against Billable Hours
Use monthly entries as the operating load, then reconcile them to hours billed per active customer. That tells you whether growth is creating profit or just busywork. Track entries per broker, review time per entry, and rework rate so you can spot when volume is outrunning capacity.
Track entries, hours, and rework.
Cap volume when errors rise.
Staff to review time, not hope.
Price for complex filings.
If entries rise but billable hours do not, owner income usually lags because labor and compliance effort go up first. The best test is simple: each new batch of entries should add more paid work than it adds unpaid review time. If not, the extra volume is just pressure on cash flow.
