A big city with a port at its center
Long Beach is a charter city incorporated in 1897. With 466,742 residents, it is the 7th-most-populous city in California and the second-most-populous in Los Angeles County, and the largest city in California that is not a county seat. It covers about 77.84 square miles.
The Port of Long Beach is the second-busiest container port in the United States and is among the world's largest shipping ports. The city also sits over an oilfield, with minor wells directly beneath it and offshore, and Wikipedia says oil extraction created a boom and continues to fund portions of the city budget.
Four economies in one city
Port and logistics
Trucking companies, customs brokers, warehouse operators, chassis and equipment services, and maintenance vendors depend on container flows. Port-driven revenue is tied to shipping schedules, not to the month. Owners carry fuel, insurance, driver pay and equipment payments through slow weeks. For illustration only, a small warehouse operator might invoice $90,000 for a month of handling and be paid after 45 days, while paying staff and rent continuously. Note that long-haul trucking has its own cash-flow reality and we do not promise funding for it.
Waterfront hospitality
The permanently docked RMS Queen Mary and the Aquarium of the Pacific are among the waterfront attractions. Restaurants, tour operators, shops and parking businesses near the water rely on visitor traffic that rises with weather and events.
Campus and neighborhood retail
California State University, Long Beach is one of the largest universities in California. The campus calendar creates seasonal swings for nearby food, copy, housing-service and retail businesses.
Old industry, new trades
Long Beach was a Navy town until the base closed. Aerospace was important too: Douglas Aircraft Company had plants at the Long Beach Airport where it built World War II aircraft and later the DC-8, DC-9, DC-10 and MD-11. Today's machine shops, fabricators and contractors are a legacy of that industrial past.
Find the page that fits your situation
| Situation | Page |
|---|---|
| Payroll, supplies, a short-term gap | Working capital |
| Cash on call for uneven weeks | Business line of credit |
| Forklifts, chassis, kitchen gear, tools | Equipment financing |
| New business | Startup business loans |
| Card-sale based advance | Merchant cash advance |
| Payments that rise and fall with revenue | Revenue-based financing |
| A fixed-schedule loan | Term loans |
| Existing advances weighing on cash flow | MCA relief |
| Lower credit scores | Bad-credit funding |
| Clinics and practices | Healthcare funding |
Our terms
We provide $25,000 to $5,000,000, with funding possible in as little as 24 hours. We consider FICO 500+, ask for about three months of business bank statements, and do not require tax returns. The application takes about five minutes with a soft credit pull, and sole proprietors can apply. For wider context, see the Los Angeles County page and the LA Metro overview. Apply here.