U.S. Metal Tank (Heavy Gauge) Manufacturing — NAICS 33242 (industry level)

A short rollup page. This North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) industry is effectively identical to its single child, NAICS 332420. For the full treatment — company profiles, deal multiples, operating metrics and detailed regulation — see the 332420 primer.

1. Overview

NAICS 33242 covers the manufacture of heavy-gauge metal tanks and vessels — storage tanks for water, fuels and chemicals; pressure vessels; liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders; cryogenic tanks; stainless-steel process and sanitary vessels; and bolted steel water and dry-bulk tanks.[1] Demand is tied to infrastructure and industrial capital spending, so the business is cyclical, but a large installed base of tanks needs ongoing inspection, repair and replacement, which cushions the cycle.

Public investors mostly get diversified exposure through industrial manufacturers and engineering contractors; private investors can buy more direct exposure through regional fabricators, pressure-vessel shops and tank-service businesses.[1]

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

The NAICS hierarchy runs from broad sectors down to five- and six-digit industries. NAICS 33242 is a five-digit industry that contains exactly one six-digit national industry:

Because there is only one child, the two levels describe the same companies, plants, products and statistics. What sits outside the level matters as much as what sits inside it: power boilers and heat exchangers fall under NAICS 332410, cans and light-gauge containers under 332431 and 332439, tank trailers under transportation-equipment manufacturing, and firms that only install tanks are generally classified in construction.[2] This page exists to give the level-wide view and hand the reader off to the leaf primer. Everything substantive about the industry — its structure, economics and named players — lives in 332420.

3. Size

The federal statistics available for this level come from the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) program, which publishes 33242 and 332420 identically. Nothing below is estimated or filled in for a suppressed value.

Sources: 2023 CBP[3] and 2022 CBP.[4] The one-year direction is mildly negative: employment fell 4.7%, establishments fell 4.2% and nominal annual payroll fell 1.3% between 2022 and 2023, even as first-quarter payroll rose — a mix of fewer workers paid more per head.[3][4] The Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard for this industry is 750 employees, which shows how large a tank manufacturer can be and still count as "small" for federal contracting.[5]

What this page no longer carries. Earlier versions of this rollup reported a 2022 Economic Census receipts total ($10.338 billion) and firm count (611) for the level. The rebuilt leaf research could not confirm those figures against a published source, so they are withdrawn rather than repeated; there is currently no verified revenue or firm-count figure at this level, and employment and payroll are the reliable size anchors.[1]

Undercount caveat. CBP counts cover establishments with payroll. It omits owner-only shops, and diversified companies are classified by each establishment's primary activity, so tank work buried inside a larger manufacturer may be counted elsewhere. Pure tank installation falls under construction, not this manufacturing code. Government-owned utilities are major customers but rarely manufacturers, so the exclusion of government activity distorts this industry less than it does others.[1][3] Ownership tilts private and regional, so headline public-market figures understate the true size of the activity.

4. Investable universe — where value concentrates

Because the level and its child are the same, the investable map is identical to 332420. Value is spread across a fragmented base rather than concentrated in a few listed names:

• Diversified public exposure, where tanks are one line inside a much larger group — Baker Hughes (which completed its acquisition of Chart Industries on July 16, 2026 at $210 per Chart share in cash, adding cryogenic storage and gas-handling equipment) and Worthington Enterprises (LPG and refrigerant cylinders, well-water and expansion tanks, pressurized containment).[1]
• More direct public exposure, still imperfect — TerraVest Industries (owner of U.S.-based Highland Tank) and the small, illiquid Paul Mueller Company (stainless-steel tanks and process systems).[1]
• Adjacent project exposure — engineering-and-construction firms such as Matrix Service Company that erect field-built storage, rather than clean tank manufacturers.[1]
• Private and employee-owned leaders — CB&I (bought from McDermott for roughly $450 million in December 2024 by a Mason Capital-led consortium), CST Industries, the employee-owned Tank Connection, TRIARC Tank (Arcosa's former steel pressure-tank business, sold for $275 million in 2022 on about $200 million of 2021 revenue) and the Tarsco businesses.[1]

The disclosed markers point to modest, not premium, pricing for ordinary fabrication: TerraVest paid $78 million for Highland Tank in 2023, roughly four times trailing earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).[1] See the 332420 primer for tickers, listings, ownership and the full transaction detail — and for why that multiple should not be applied mechanically.

5. How the money works

Two economic models sit inside this one industry. Shop-fabricated products (cylinders, repeat tank designs) are sold by unit or run; profit turns on factory utilization, purchasing scale, product mix and freight discipline, and standardized designs invite more price competition. Engineered tanks and vessels are project businesses billed on fixed-price, cost-reimbursable or milestone terms, where estimating errors, design changes, welding rework, weather or commissioning problems can erase a project's margin. The biggest cost exposures are carbon and stainless-steel plate, specialty alloys, certified welding labor, coatings, nondestructive testing and freight; escalation clauses and customer deposits offset some of that risk.[1]

The margin gap between the two models is the single most useful thing to understand at this level. Matrix Service's Storage and Terminal Solutions segment earned a 4.0% gross margin on fiscal-2025 revenue of $365.9 million (gross profit of $14.7 million, with one crude-terminal project's labor productivity alone costing $5.1 million), while Chart's Cryo Tank Solutions segment produced a 23.0% gross margin and a 10.9% operating margin on $624.2 million of 2025 sales — although Chart's figures include international operations and higher-technology vacuum-insulated systems that reach beyond U.S. NAICS 332420.[1] Field-erected commodity storage and code-certified cryogenic equipment are not the same business, and buying "tank exposure" without checking which one you own is the common error.

Selling prices have inflated substantially: the producer-price index for this industry rose from 163.1 in December 2020 to 235.8 in June 2022 and 305.8 in June 2026 (December 2003 = 100).[6] Input costs have moved with them — the United States raised Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs from 25% to 50% effective June 4, 2025, which can lift both imported input costs and domestic mill pricing.[7] Full operating metrics (orders, backlog, book-to-bill, price realization, utilization) are in 332420.

6. Demand drivers

Water infrastructure is the steadier market, supported by federal drinking-water, wastewater and stormwater funding; the Environmental Protection Agency's sixth drinking-water needs assessment identified $472.6 billion of required investment over 20 years, of which $47.6 billion is for constructing, rehabilitating or covering water-storage reservoirs.[8] Energy and process markets — refining, chemicals, terminals, industrial gases and liquefied natural gas (LNG) — are more cyclical and drive demand for atmospheric, pressure and cryogenic vessels, with the LNG build-out the largest single swing factor.[1] Agriculture and food handling support dry-bulk silos, and pharmaceuticals, mining, fire protection and data-center cooling round out demand. Hydrogen, carbon capture, renewable natural gas and ammonia are credible incremental applications whose timing can move backlog sharply. Replacement, inspection and repair are generally less volatile than new-project fabrication.[1]

7. Regulation

Compliance is both a cost and a competitive barrier. Key regimes include the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (Section VIII covers vessels operating above 15 pounds per square inch gauge), American Petroleum Institute (API) Standard 650 (welded oil-storage tanks), American Water Works Association standards (water tanks), EPA Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure rules, and domestic-content (American Iron and Steel / Build America, Buy America) requirements on federally assisted water projects. Workplace enforcement is real but not extreme: federal OSHA recorded 59 citations across 17 inspected NAICS 332420 establishments and $281,000 of current penalties in the year to September 2025, concentrated in respiratory protection, machine guarding, powered industrial trucks, fall protection, confined spaces and lockout/tagout.[1]

Certified labor is the binding constraint behind all of it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects just 2% growth in welder employment from 2024 to 2034 but about 45,600 openings a year, almost all to replace people leaving the occupation — and code-qualified pressure-vessel welders and field supervisors are a much narrower pool than the headline occupation.[9] The leaf primer details each regime.

8. Consolidation

At the aggregate level the industry is fragmented, but the evidence for that is old. The last published concentration ratios date from the 2002 Economic Census, when the four largest companies accounted for 18.6% of industry value added, the largest eight 27.7%, the largest 20 41.0% and the largest 50 57.5%.[10] Two decades of roll-up activity since then may have shifted those shares, and no current Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (the sum of squared market shares, the standard concentration gauge) is available for this industry — an earlier version of this page cited 2022 concentration statistics that could not be confirmed, so they have been removed.[1]

Structurally, the fragmentation is regional rather than uniform: commodity tanks compete on price and freight within a shipping radius, while pressure, cryogenic and sanitary vessels are more concentrated because code certifications, approved-vendor status, engineering history and field-execution records are hard to replicate.[1] That leaves ample room for continued roll-up of regional fabricators, whose main risk is integration: an acquired shop brings its warranties, contract estimates, safety record and unfinished projects with it.

9. Risks

The risk set is the child's: steel and alloy inflation that can't be passed through; tariffs and supply disruption; fixed-price overruns, welding rework and commissioning failures; customer delays and cancellations; shortages of certified welders and field crews; large-project or customer concentration; product-liability, leak and environmental claims; backlog that proves lower-margin or less firm than reported; working-capital swings from inventory and milestone timing; acquisition leverage and inherited warranty obligations; and substitution from concrete, fiberglass, plastic, composite cylinders and imported tanks — with steel holding its advantage where pressure, fire resistance, temperature, structural load, reparability or very large custom geometry dominate.[1]

10. How to invest & outlook

There is no separate way to invest in "33242" versus "332420" — they are the same industry. Public investors should measure actual tank exposure rather than trusting corporate labels, comparing segment backlog, book-to-bill, gross margin, cash conversion, customer concentration and leverage. Private investors should scrutinize contract terms, steel escalators, backlog quality, code stamps and audit history, welding labor, plant utilization, environmental liabilities and customer deposits; sanitary stainless, cryogenic and aftermarket service niches tend to earn better valuations than commodity fabrication without service revenue.[1]

Outlook — judgment: balanced to moderately constructive. Water replacement, domestic-content rules and gas-infrastructure projects give multi-year support without a broad-based boom. Two indicators frame the caution: fabricated-metal-product capacity utilization — a broader proxy than this industry — was 76.9% in June 2026,[11] and Matrix's Storage and Terminal Solutions segment carried $747.3 million of backlog but only a 0.3 times quarterly book-to-bill ratio at March 2026, a reminder that project awards arrive unevenly and that one contractor is not the whole market.[1] For the full outlook and evidence, read the 332420 primer.

Sources

1. Metal Tank (Heavy Gauge) Manufacturing Primer — NAICS 332420 (companion leaf primer; carries the underlying company, regulatory and market citations).
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 North American Industry Classification System Manual, 2022, https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 County Business Patterns: United States, 2025, https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/datasets/2023/cbp23us.zip
4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 County Business Patterns: United States, 2024, https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/datasets/2022/cbp22us.zip
5. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards, 2023, https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
6. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Producer Price Index: Metal Tank (Heavy Gauge) Manufacturing, 2026, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/PCU332420332420
7. The White House, Proclamation: Adjusting Imports of Aluminum and Steel into the United States, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/06/adjusting-imports-of-aluminum-and-steel-into-the-united-states/
8. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA's 6th Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment, 2023, https://www.epa.gov/dwsrf/epas-6th-drinking-water-infrastructure-needs-survey-and-assessment
9. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers, 2025, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers-and-brazers.htm
10. U.S. Census Bureau, 2002 Economic Census: Concentration Ratios in Manufacturing, 2006, https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/economic-census/2002/manufacturing-reports/subject-series/ec0231sr1.pdf
11. Federal Reserve Board, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization—G.17, 2026, https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/table8.htm