Class 8 Used Truck Index Drops 21% YoY — Carriers Liquidate to Cover Insurance and the Emissions Buyout.
Sandhills' May print shows 2020-2022 sleeper tractors clearing 21% below year-ago. The two largest used-truck dealers tell us asset-based fleets are the buyers and small fleets are the sellers — capacity isn't really exiting, it's being transferred up the food chain at fire-sale prices. The implication for the 2027 emissions mandate is the part nobody's pricing yet.
Sandhills' May Class 8 used-truck index, released this afternoon, prints 21% below year-ago levels across the 2020-2022 sleeper tractor cohort that dominates the secondary market right now. The MoM read is also down — off 3.4% versus April — and the average days-on-lot for that age cohort has compressed to 41 days, the tightest turn since Q3 2021.
The headline reads like a capacity exit. It isn't, quite. Asset-based fleets — Werner, Schneider, Knight-Swift, the regional 200-1,000 power-unit shops — are the dominant buyers in the May print, picking up clean 2020-2022 sleepers at $42K-$58K versus the same equipment selling for $58K-$74K a year ago. The owner-operators and 2-5 truck fleets liquidating into this market are doing so to cover insurance renewals (the Garza-driven premium reset hits across the small-carrier book this quarter), fuel float, and in many cases the operating cash they'd otherwise spec into a 2027-compliant replacement.