SBA 7(a) Gas Station Feasibility Study in Utah

In Utah the 7(a) gas station and truck stop cell is notable for a median loan of $760,750, which is only 0.69x the nationwide 7(a) fuel-site median. Approvals number 60 between FY2017 and FY2026, totalling $64.3 million, with the central half of loans between $453,875 and $1.6 million. Utah is 22nd in state order by loan count, and fuel sites rank 11 of 39 inside Utah, so this is a middling, regular niche rather than a headline market.

Franchise share and the credit unions

Franchised loans are 48.3% of the cell, nearly half, so a borrower is as likely to be buying into a brand as running an independent site. The most unusual feature is the lender list: America First Federal Credit Union holds 10 loans worth $14.6 million, Mountain America FCU holds 8 worth $7.1 million, and Bank of Utah holds 6 worth $4.7 million. Two of the three leaders are credit unions, which is not what a reader would assume from a national 7(a) table. SBA's holder records produced these counts, and they speak to volume rather than to any institution's standards.

Geography and years

Weber County has the most loans with 12, ahead of Salt Lake with 10, Davis with 8 and Utah County with 7. Tooele has 5 and Box Elder 4, with Cache, Garfield and Iron at 2 each. Approvals were 8 in FY2017 and 10 in FY2018, fell to 5 for three years, then dipped to 4 in FY2022 with $923,700 of dollars, jumped to 9 loans and $12.9 million in FY2023, and settled at 6, 4 and 4 in the next three years. The swings in dollars are larger than the swings in count, which tells you a few big sites move the totals.

Cancellations and the loss floor in Utah

Cancelled projects make up at least 7.7% of approvals through the FY2024 approvals, and it stays 7.7% even when undisbursed loans are added, so nothing is hanging open. Losses recorded so far sit at a 0.00% floor, and the same 0.00% holds inside five years of approval, drawn from a funded cohort of 32 loans. Both are floors drawn from SBA records and a cohort this small is easily moved by one default.

What a Utah study has to test

Since the code tracks the borrower's trade and not the site, a travel center is indistinguishable from a conventional station here, and EV charging has no 2022 NAICS entry at all. Those limits matter because a highway site and a neighborhood site behave differently. A feasibility study should test fuel volume against traffic, brand terms, convenience store sales per square foot, tank and environmental condition, and debt service coverage with fuel margins under pressure. The appraisal needs the real estate valued apart from the business, because a lender will look at both.