The most useful money in a factory may be the money already bolted to the floor. A production line, fleet of forklifts or room of servers is not only equipment. It is also an asset that can be financed, refinanced or sold and leased back, releasing cash without asking the machines to take the afternoon off. That is the compact premise behind 36th Street Capital Partners, a Morristown, New Jersey lender that has spent a decade making physical assets financially useful.
The company occupies a specific lane in commercial finance. Its clients are generally middle-market and enterprise businesses, public or private, that need essential equipment or want to pull liquidity from assets they already own. Some carry investment-grade credit. Others have a complicated history, a pending acquisition, a seasonal squeeze or a profile that does not fit a traditional bank's lending template. 36th Street Capital examines the borrower, but it also examines the collateral and the job that collateral performs.
Founded in 2015 by Kiran Kapur and Mark Horan, the firm says it has funded more than $1 billion across more than 700 transactions for over 100 clients. Its LinkedIn page lists 31 employees. That ratio hints at the business: this is not a branch network or a consumer app. It is a compact team of originators, credit specialists, lawyers, operators and capital-markets professionals arranging a relatively small number of relatively large decisions.
The product
Money shaped around machinery
36th Street Capital offers buyout leases, fair-market-value capital and operating leases, sale-leasebacks, equipment loans and structured credit facilities. The labels matter less than the choice they create. A company can finance a new asset instead of draining its cash reserve. It can refinance an installed asset pool. It can match payments to an expected useful life. Or it can sell equipment to the lender and lease it back, trading ownership for immediate liquidity while operations continue.
A sale-leaseback is the most visually satisfying of these tools. Imagine a manufacturer owns a set of presses outright. The presses are productive but illiquid. 36th Street Capital can purchase them and lease them back to the manufacturer. Cash moves onto the manufacturer's balance sheet; the presses stay where they are. That money might support an acquisition, reduce another debt, absorb a tariff shock or fund expansion. The tradeoff is a new lease obligation and the loss of direct ownership, which is why structure, valuation and term all matter.
New or installed machinery with an operating purpose.
Terms shaped around credit, collateral and useful life.
Cash preserved or released for the next business need.
The customer base extends beyond direct borrowers. Equipment lessors, private-equity firms and advisers bring the company transactions that sit outside conventional credit parameters. The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association lists its usual deal range at roughly $2 million to $50 million, with an average near $10 million. 36th Street Capital says it can hold positions up to $25 million on its own balance sheet and use syndication partners to facilitate transactions of $100 million or more.
“Our mission is to be a client's trusted advisor and single-source solution for equipment financing needs.”36th Street Capital
The engine
A lender with two sets of keys
The distinguishing feature is not one lease type. It is the way the company assembles funding. Its own balance sheet gives it the ability to underwrite and hold a deal. A network of banks, syndication partners and asset-backed investors increases the size and variety of transactions it can support. In practice, the firm can act as originator, underwriter, funder, servicer and distributor rather than simply passing a lead to someone else.
That hybrid model helps explain the company's emphasis on certainty of execution. An inexpensive proposal is not useful if the lender changes its mind after weeks of diligence. Equipment purchases have delivery dates; acquisitions have closing calendars; sellers have limited patience. By discussing collateral and credit constraints early, the firm tries to make its first answer resemble its final one. Speed matters, but consistency from proposal through funding is the more valuable promise.
The capital underneath that promise has grown. In April 2023, the company announced that a six-bank group led by Capital One had expanded its senior secured revolving facility to $280 million, a $110 million increase. In December 2025, a new funding subsidiary entered a $400 million syndicated revolving facility, expandable to $550 million through additional commitments. The structure finances the subsidiary's purchases of leases and notes originated and serviced by 36th Street Capital.
The 2025 filing offers a rare clear look inside a private specialty lender. It reported $328.1 million in net investment in leases, $64.8 million in notes receivable and $400.2 million in total assets. Interest income was $42 million, total non-interest income was $2.5 million and net income was $12.7 million. The company also described access to the asset-backed securitization market, another route for turning originated contracts back into lending capacity.
The edge
The machine is only half the story
Equipment finance is not a pawnshop at corporate scale. Collateral provides support, but repayment still depends on a functioning business. The lender needs to know whether an asset is truly essential, how quickly it loses value, who else could use it and what removal might cost. It must also decide whether management can support the payment schedule. The company's website says its team has more than 150 years of combined experience, language that signals a business where accumulated judgment remains difficult to automate.
Its competitive set includes bank equipment-finance divisions and independents such as SLR Equipment Finance, Post Road Equipment Finance, Wingspire, Encina Commercial Finance and North Mill Equipment Finance. Broader asset-based lenders and private-credit funds can also solve adjacent problems. 36th Street Capital positions itself between these camps: more specialized in machinery than a general credit fund, but more flexible across the credit spectrum than a conservative bank program.
The specialty has limits. ELFA's current directory says the company will consider soft assets, but does not finance aircraft, rail or retail equipment. That selectivity is useful context. “Industry agnostic” does not mean “asset indifferent.” A disciplined lender is partly defined by the equipment and structures it declines.
Culture, in a finance company like this, shows up less in office perks than in the behavior a client encounters during diligence. 36th Street Capital repeats a short set of ideas: integrity, transparency, speed, reliability and relationships. Its founders came from equipment and specialty-finance careers. Its recent personnel moves follow the same pattern, adding experienced capital-markets and risk leaders rather than presenting technology as a substitute for credit work.
The market
Private credit, with grease under its nails
The larger market story is the migration of corporate borrowing beyond banks. Regulation, concentration limits and standardized approval processes can make traditional lenders cautious about unusual credits. Private-credit firms often step into the gap, but equipment finance adds a tangible layer: the lender can structure around assets that keep a business producing. This makes 36th Street Capital part of private credit's expansion, even if its daily vocabulary is leases, residuals and collateral schedules.
A recent transaction makes the role concrete. In 2025, the firm said it closed a $15 million equipment loan for a longstanding automotive manufacturer. The facility refinanced an existing asset pool and provided liquidity for an acquisition, all within a few weeks of the mandate. That is the model in miniature: old machines supporting a new strategic move.
For a chief financial officer, the practical question is where equipment finance belongs in the capital stack. It is most useful when the asset has a clear operating role and conventional cash is better saved for inventory, hiring or a transaction. It can also diversify funding away from a single bank relationship. The comparison should include the full lease or loan cost, covenants, end-of-term choices and the consequences of a default, not simply the first quoted rate. 36th Street Capital's relevance comes from working through those variables deal by deal, then matching the resulting structure to a source of capital that can close.
The company marked its 10-year anniversary in 2025 and has continued building its capital-markets and risk bench. Greg Stitt, hired into capital markets in January 2025, was later promoted to lead the platform. Stewart Jones joined in 2026 as a senior vice president of credit and risk management. The two appointments map neatly onto the firm's requirements: find and distribute capital, then protect it.
There is no consumer spectacle here, which is part of the appeal. A borrower gets equipment, cash or both. The lender gets interest, fees and a claim supported by productive assets. Capital partners get access to originated contracts. Somewhere in the middle, a press keeps pressing and a forklift keeps lifting. 36th Street Capital's work is to make sure the financial structure is as useful as the machine underneath it.