Profit Margin
10.8%
Net income ÷ total receipts (IRS SOI)
Transportation and Warehousing ·NAICS 486
NAICS 486 · IRS SOI 2023 · Census CBP
Pipeline Transportation - Industry Benchmarks
27 SBA loans on record, $7M in volume, for NAICS 486.
- 10.8%
- Net margin
- N/A
- Workers employed
- N/A
- Avg payroll / employee
- $7M
- SBA lending, FY20–26
Data updated July 2026
The verdict · NAICS 486
Pipeline Transportation runs a 10.8% pre-tax net margin - in line with the national median - across 4K establishments employing N/A workers.
- 10.8%
- Pre-tax net margin (IRS SOI)
- N/A
- Workers employed (Census CBP)
- N/A
- Avg payroll / employee
- $7M
- SBA lending, FY20–26
Benchmarking Insights for Pipeline Transportation
Pipeline Transportation sits inside Transportation and Warehousing at a 10.8% net margin (in line with the national median), $8.4B in aggregate receipts across 2,197 returns, averaging $3.8B per establishment.
3,517 establishments employ N/A workers..
Total Receipts
$8.4B
Annual revenue (IRS SOI)
Net Income
$907.9M
Pre-tax net income
Employment
N/A
Total employees (Census CBP)
Avg Payroll / Employee
N/A
Annual compensation
Establishments
3,517
Business locations
Release-over-release change
What changed from Census CBP 2022 to 2023
establishment count increased by 125. This comparison uses two published national Census County Business Patterns releases; suppressed fields are omitted rather than estimated.
Where each dollar of Pipeline Transportation revenue goes
Pipeline Transportation margin vs national reference points
Pipeline Transportation net margin 35.9%
Cross-industry median (5%)
p25/median/p75 = 3%/5%/8%
Business Structure Breakdown
How businesses in this industry are legally structured (IRS SOI)
C Corporation
519 returns 24%
Margin: 10.3% · Receipts: $8.1B
Sole Proprietorship
1,678 returns 76%
Margin: 24.0% · Receipts: $321.5M
Financial Detail
- Total Tax Returns Filed
- 2,197
- Avg Receipts per Business
- $3.8B
Sub-Industries
| Industry | Profit Margin |
|---|---|
| Other Pipeline Transportation NAICS 4869 | N/A |
| Pipeline Transportation of Crude Oil NAICS 4861 | N/A |
| Pipeline Transportation of Natural Gas NAICS 4862 | N/A |
SBA Lending Activity
SBA FY2020–2026SBA Loans Approved
27
Total Loan Volume
$7M
Avg Loan Size
$268K
Jobs Supported
128
Program Breakdown
7(a) 27 (100%)
504 0 (0%)
Top SBA Lender
Wells Fargo Bank National Association
7 loans in this industry
New Business Share
55.6% of borrowers were new/startup businesses
Annual Lending Trend (6 yrs)
2020 3
2021 4
2023 6
2024 5
2025 8
2026 1
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average revenue for Pipeline Transportation?
$8.4B in total annual receipts across all Pipeline Transportation businesses. Average per business: $3.8B.
How profitable is Pipeline Transportation?
10.8% net profit margin, in line with the national median.
How many businesses are in Pipeline Transportation?
3,517 business establishments.
What is the average payroll per employee in Pipeline Transportation?
Average payroll data for Pipeline Transportation is not available in the current Census CBP dataset.
Which states have the most Pipeline Transportation employment?
State-level employment data for Pipeline Transportation is not available in the current dataset.
How much SBA lending does Pipeline Transportation receive?
Pipeline Transportation businesses received 27 SBA loans totaling $7 million between FY2020 and FY2026. The average loan size was $268K. These loans supported 128 jobs at origination. Most lending (100%) came through the SBA 7(a) program.
Comparable industry benchmarks
These links are calculated from the current national dataset. They are comparison paths, not recommendations or evidence that businesses operate alike.
How this ranks: Pipeline Transportation reports a higher net margin than 84% of the 79 IRS-tracked industries at the same NAICS detail level. Calculated by ranking this industry's reported value against every other industry at the same NAICS digit-level, not the whole dataset: comparing a 6-digit detail industry to a 2-digit sector would mix incompatible scales.
Closest reported net margins
Same NAICS detail level, ordered by the smallest difference in reported IRS pre-tax margin.
Benchmarking Pipeline Transportation
- Net margin: 10.8% vs sector. Browse Transportation and Warehousing
- 3,517 establishments, N/A workers. Payroll benchmarks
- 27 SBA loans on record. SBA lending rankings
Disclaimer: Public IRS/Census data, not financial or tax advice. See our full disclaimer.
Sources: IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) Business Tax Statistics · Census Bureau County Business Patterns 2023
NAICS 486 · Data year: 2023
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, which released its 2023 County Business Patterns dataset in June 2025, PlainBizBench benchmarks 2,002 U.S. industries against Internal Revenue Service Statistics of Income data. See our methodology for the full compilation process.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns / SUSB Industry employment scale, payroll, and firm-size benchmarks · 2023
Every figure on PlainBizBench is rendered directly from federal source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page aggregates profit-margin, payroll, entity-type, and SBA-lending benchmarks for this industry, live from the dataset. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.
Disclaimer: Public IRS/Census data, not financial or tax advice. See our full disclaimer.