Financing for Contractors in Richmond, KY: From a Floor Grinder to a Roofing Conveyor Trailer

A contracting business has two kinds of money needs. The business side, machines, tools, a work van, the crew's wages and the supplies a job uses, can go into a request. The project side, a loan to build a house or a commercial building or to buy land, is a building construction loan or real estate finance, and neither is arranged here.

• A machine or a set of tools that lasts for years: equipment financing, with the machine as possible security
• Wages and supplier bills while a customer payment is on its way: working capital on a fixed term
• Small costs that come and go with the job list: a line of credit drawn and paid down
• A service van or crew pickup for the contractor's own jobs: equipment financing, since the vehicle is a work tool

Each funding partner sets its own terms for these, and any offer, or none, comes from the partner.

Illustration only, invented figures: a Madison County, KY flooring contractor that grinds and seals concrete floors prices a walk-behind planetary floor grinder at $17,450.00 and a dust extractor at $6,980.00, $24,430.00 on one quote.

Over 48 months at an 11.4% annual rate, equipment financing puts the invented payment at $636.16, and the 48 invented payments total $30,535.68, or $6,105.68 of interest.

Both machines plug in and roll from one job to the next, so nothing about them is property work. A partner may ask for the dealer quote, serial numbers after delivery and recent bank statements; what it asks for is up to the partner.

County Business Patterns files flooring, drywall, painting and tile firms under building finishing contractors (NAICS 2383). In Madison County, KY the 2023 count was 20 such employers, 12 of them with a crew of fewer than five.

Illustration only, invented figures: a Richmond, KY roofing company prices a trailer-mounted material conveyor at $31,800.00 for lifting shingle bundles from the ground to the work level.

In the invented table, the extra 12 months buy the roofer a payment $130.80 lighter and cost $1,867.08 of added interest.

Which term fits depends on how many jobs a month the conveyor works and how much of the crew's cash the payment leaves; the invented table prices both without choosing. Roofing contractors (NAICS 238160) are a small code in the county: 11 employer establishments in 2023, 7 of them under five employees (CBP).

In these counts the share of very small establishments is higher among builders (71.2% of 52) than among specialty trade contractors (58.3% of 120). Across the whole sector, the 181 employer establishments reported 1,371 paid employees and $75.8 million of annual payroll, a county total rather than the payroll of any one contractor.

The 2023 ZIP Code Business Patterns file puts 126 construction establishments in ZIP 40475; at 59.5% of them the staff was under five. Nonemployer Statistics listed 884 construction businesses with no paid employees in Madison County, KY for 2024.

Employer size classes for every trade in the county are on the Richmond, KY page.

The Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey counts new privately owned housing units authorized by permit. Its Madison County, KY counts run 378 units for 2023, 816 for 2024 and 813 for 2025.

Single-unit buildings account for 473 of the 813 units authorized in 2025, or 58.2% by our arithmetic. The survey covers new homes only, so commercial construction, alterations to existing buildings and demolitions are not in it, and an authorized unit is not yet a finished one.

For a contractor, these counts describe the county's residential permit activity, not any one firm's work. Other trades with their own pages are listed on the industries page.