$185K in 22 hours: How an Illinois HVAC contractor cleared the summer install crunch
An 8-year residential HVAC contractor. 47% YoY revenue growth. But a June install queue demanded $180K in equipment inventory before commissions cleared. Here's how we structured the file.
The scenario and numbers below are an illustrative example of how a working commercial finance broker approaches this type of file — not a specific transaction closed by Steady Path Funding. Every industry, location, and identifying detail is fictionalized. Actual terms depend on your credit, revenue, and lender fit.
The situation
The owner walked in with a common summer story: 47% YoY revenue growth, a fully booked June install calendar, and a working capital problem that math couldn't ignore.
Twenty-three units — mostly high-SEER heat pumps — needed to be ordered from the distributor by the 15th to hit the install dates his crew had promised. The distributor wanted net-15 on the entire pallet: $180,000 in equipment cost, due before a single install was invoiced.
His numbers were solid. Trailing 12 months of business bank statements showed $2.1M in deposits, average daily balance of $28K, and a 680 personal FICO. Two years earlier the same file would've walked straight into an SBA 7(a) — but SBA 7(a) takes 45–60 days, and he had 8.
We needed capital in the door before the 15th.
The structure
The layered approach. No single product was going to close this deal cleanly. A pure MCA would've priced too high for a 9-month season; a term loan too slow; a line of credit alone wouldn't stretch to $185K on his profile.
We split the file across two lenders:
- Fintech Working Capital · $110K — 9-month term, 1.19 factor. Funded in 22 hours via next-day ACH after 4 months of bank statements + a signed application.
- Revenue Financing · $75K — Repaid as 8% of daily card revenue, capped at 12 months. Second-position, but structured so the two payments together stayed under 18% of average daily deposits.
Total blended cost of capital: ~34% APR effective. More expensive than SBA, dramatically cheaper than a pure MCA, and — critically — the paperwork existed in the borrower's own online banking. No CPA prep. No tax return sourcing. No collateral filings.
What we intentionally didn't do: we didn't stack a third product ("cash on cash on cash" is how underwriters describe the file we said no to). We didn't offer a personal guarantee on the fintech piece (the profile didn't require it). We didn't route through an SBA Express — that lender's timeline was closer to 3 weeks and would have missed the distributor deadline.
The outcome
The wire hit the operating account at 11:47 AM the next business day. The equipment order went in at 2:15 PM. First install was on the 18th.
By the end of the season:
- $185K deployed against $412K in installed revenue (2.2× turn on the borrowed capital)
- Blended debt service consumed 11% of monthly deposits — well inside the 20% we consider healthy
- Paid off in 9 months, on schedule, no missed debits
- Refi opportunity opened in month 10 — with a season of solid repayment history, the same borrower now qualifies for an SBA 7(a) working line of credit at ~11% APR for the next expansion
The lesson we file this one under: the right product is often two products, structured against different revenue streams. A single-product answer is the easy one; the correct one usually requires a broker who's willing to read the file twice.
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