Used Class 8 Sales Rise 3.5% Year Over Year in January

Used Class 8 truck sales beat sequential and year-ago comparisons in January, ACT Research reported.

Sales increased 3.5% to 23,600 units from the 22,800 reported during the prior-year period. They also increased 8.6% sequentially from 21,700 units in December. The average retail sale price declined 3% year over year to $57,371 from $59,113 while inching up 0.1% sequentially from $57,315. Average mileage increased 0.2% to 415,000 from 414,000 a year ago but slipped 2.4% from the 425,000 reported in December.

“Prices are expected to start transitioning to [year-over-year] growth in early 2025,” said Steve Tam, vice president at ACT Research. “Same-dealer used Class 8 retail truck sales held reasonably steady to start the new year. The 1.4% [month-to-month] decrease was stronger than the expected 9% seasonal contraction indicated by history. January is typically the weakest sales month of the year, running nearly 9% below average.”

J.D. Power highlighted in its monthly market report that January retail pricing was higher than the year-ago period. The report also found auction volumes were low. But this was to be expected since there are usually few auctions in the first half of the month.

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Tam 

“January 2025 was no exception,” the report stated. “This low volume of sales combined with a very wide range in mileage skewed the averages in our table lower than actual market movement.”

J.D. Power also noted that retail day cabs did not show the same pricing strength as their sleeper counterparts. The average sleeper tractor retailed during the month was 62 months old, had 439,715 miles and sold at $61,365.

“January was very normal,” said Trey Golden, vice president of used truck sales at Rush Enterprises. “We performed pretty well given the fact that the largest market, probably in the country, was on fire for most of January with all the L.A. debacle. We had stores that were out of power for a long time. We had employees and customers that lost their houses and then a lot of the rest of the country was in the deep freeze, which is normal for January. But just given those interrelated issues, I thought we did pretty well in January.”

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Golden 

Golden added that the market in general also seemed to hold up pretty well. But he pointed out that conditions have since become a lot more uncertain because of tariffs and emissions regulations. The outcome of either could have a profound impact on the new and used truck markets. Golden is still expecting the used truck market to improve this year, just slowly.

“I’m going to call it a slight recovery,” Golden said. “We’re not looking for the market to go gangbusters or any huge leaps. But we do feel like things have been pointing to it getting a little better. Now with all this regulatory uncertainty, everybody has an opinion on which way it’s going to go, and there’s a lot of scenarios that seem plausible. Some that could be good for the used truck market, and some of that could be bad. So just leave it up to uncertainty.”

Golden suspects that the used truck market is going to be influenced more by freight than emissions regulations or tariffs, with the latter pair of issues weighing more on the new truck market. He noted that tariffs still have an influence on the used market, but that is more about how they impact freight volume. The bigger underlying issue, he pointed out, is that freight volume has to improve for the used truck market to fully recover.

“There is supposed to be a pre-buy, starting sometime this year,” Golden said. “I think the best case is that’s still going to happen. But there is some uncertainty around that. [Regarding emissions], we’re going to keep cleaning the trucks and get them cleaner and cleaner. I don’t think that’s going away. But if for some reason the dates [for implementing stricter emissions regulations] were going to change, then that would change ACT’s forecast for ’26 and ’27 and smooth it out.”