Leadership

An operator who has scaled 40+ locations. A builder of data and underwriting systems.

One team, buying and growing the essential service businesses communities rely on — for the long term. Bur Oak is run full time by the two people you will meet. There is no investment committee you will never be in the room with, and no fund clock forcing a sale on somebody else’s schedule.

A vacuum service truck parked in a residential driveway

Why this industry

Somebody has to do it.

More than one in five American households treat wastewater on their own property. Nobody thinks about it until the day they have to.

The work gets done by people who get up before dawn, drive a $200,000 truck down a frost-heaved township road, and handle what nobody else will. It is non-deferrable and recession-resistant, which is why we picked it.

What this region has never had is a permanent home for companies whose founders are ready to slow down. National platforms consolidated the East Coast and moved south. The Midwest, with the largest concentration of systems in the country, got left to brokers.

CEO and Co-Founder

Scott Kunes

Scott is an operator, investor and leadership strategist who builds businesses that endure. He helped scale one of the Midwest’s largest privately held multi-location enterprises — from 16 to more than 40 locations — leading acquisitions, integrations, and the operating systems and leadership teams behind sustained growth.

His expertise spans M&A, multi-location operations, succession planning and organisational culture, with deep experience partnering with founders and family-owned businesses navigating their next chapter.

Grounded in servant leadership and guided by his faith, Scott believes business is stewardship: great companies empower their people, strengthen their communities, and are left healthier than they were found. His focus today is acquiring and scaling essential service businesses built to serve for generations.

Co-Founder

Ben Peterson

Ben is an entrepreneur, product builder and investor who brings institutional-grade data, underwriting and systems to main-street businesses. Over fifteen years leading product and P&L in financial analytics and healthcare data, he helped grow a national services organisation from $40M to $130M in revenue, owning pricing, technology and the systems that turn growth into durable margin.

He holds an MBA in Finance from UNC Kenan-Flagler and founded a venture studio building AI-powered data platforms that turn public information into proprietary intelligence.

Ben specialises in finding the information advantage inside a business — and believes technology should amplify great operators, never replace the trust local companies spend decades earning. He lives in the Twin Cities with his family.

Bur Oak is funded by committed partner equity, family office capital and senior lending relationships. No auction process, no broker required, and no obligation to sell the platform on anyone else’s schedule.

Principles

How we run what we buy.

Local decides local
Pricing, scheduling, hiring and how a job gets done stay with the operating company.
One stack
Everything financial and administrative runs on one shared system. That is the only reason a small team can support a lot of companies well.
Compliance is not negotiable
Licensed operators, permitted disposal, accurate manifests. Companies in this business fail here before they fail anywhere else.
Density before geography
Four companies in one region beats one in four states. Stops per mile is the whole margin.
Buy the crew
Licensed operators and CDL drivers are scarcer than customers. Retention is an acquisition criterion.
We hold
No fund clock. We buy expecting to own for a long time, and underwrite that way.

The name

Why a tree.

Bur oaks survived a century of prairie fire. Thick bark, and a taproot fifteen feet down before the crown is ten years old.

They are still standing in fencerows across Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa a hundred and fifty years after everything around them was plowed under. That describes the companies we buy: unglamorous, essential, rooted in one place, still there.

Our job is to add the root system, not replace the tree.