Nobody Wants These $80,000 Trucks — Here's Why

Ajouté : 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Ford dealerships have over 25,000 RAM trucks sitting on their lots right now.

[00:00:04]Not for days, for hundreds of days. Some of these trucks are priced north of a hundred grand, >> [music] >> and nobody wants them. I spent the last week digging into the truck market, and honestly, this whole thing feels like watching a slow-motion collapse that nobody wants to acknowledge. Here's what I found. Over 25,000 RAM 1500, 2500, and 3500 trucks have been sitting on car lots for hundreds of days with sticker prices ranging from $67,000 to over $100,000.

[00:00:39]Even America's most popular trucks, like the Ford F-150, are struggling to move and gathering [music] dust. Toyota Tundras that used to fly off the lot in weeks, now sitting for 200 to 250 days on average. Most reviewers skip over this. I am not going to, because this isn't about some temporary market hiccup. This is about human psychology hitting a breaking point.

[00:01:06]>> [music] >> The Dave Cantin Group's 2025 market outlook report says the US market has reached peak truck with consumer sentiment beginning to change. And when I say consumer sentiment, I mean something deeper than preference. This is a trend driven by affordability and the challenges Americans are having with car payments.

[00:01:29]Let me show you what that actually looks like in numbers. The average [music] transaction price for a full-size pickup truck in January 2026 was $66,102. Not the luxury trim, not the fully loaded King Ranch edition.

[00:01:47]That's the average. Between 2014 and 2024, the average price of a mid-tier full-size pickup truck climbed 53.1%, while the average blue collar wage grew just 38.7% You know what that means?

[00:02:04]The people who actually need trucks for work can't afford them anymore. And this is where the psychology gets wild.

[00:02:13]By 2023, the average truck price had risen to equal a full year's gross pay for the average blue collar worker, a threshold [music] that had never been crossed before.

[00:02:24]Think about that. A construction worker in Tennessee would have to work an entire year before [music] taxes to afford the average new truck, which is wild because it changes everything about the decision. So, what's happening? All right. People are walking away. Ford's F-series saw sales drop 3.1% in Q4 of 2025.

[00:02:49]And by February 2026, F-series sales plunged 16. 2% year-over-year.

[00:02:57]The best-selling vehicle in America for nearly 50 years is losing ground fast.

[00:03:03]But here's the part that surprised me.

[00:03:04]It's not that people stopped wanting trucks, they stopped wanting these trucks at these prices. As half-ton trucks have ballooned in both physical size and price, buyers are dropping down a weight class to mid-size trucks with an average transaction price around $42,700, a $23,000 discount compared to full-size. In February 2026, Ford's mid-size Ranger saw sales jump 29.9%.

[00:03:36][music] So, people still need trucks.

[00:03:37]They're just refusing to pay luxury car prices for them. And the manufacturers, [music] they're not backing down. CarEdge data from 2023 found that of more than 53,000 new RAM 1500s available for sale nationally, just 3,445 units were the most affordable Tradesman trim. By early 2026, only 2,200 of 73,000 [music] new RAM 1500 trucks for sale were Tradesman trim. The affordable trucks don't exist anymore. Dealers aren't ordering them, manufacturers aren't building them because the profit margins are thin. So, they flood the market with loaded Lariats and High Country editions and Denali packages and hope someone bites.

[00:04:33]Except people aren't biting. Let me tell you what people are doing instead.

[00:04:36]They're buying used with the average used vehicle payment at $532 a month. Buyers in 2026 are going for proven models with the Ford F-150 accounting for 19.5% of used truck sales. They're keeping their old trucks longer. The average age of vehicles has hit nearly 13 years as of 2025.

[00:05:04]>> [music] >> And some people are just saying, "Forget it." and driving beaters. A 27-year-old dishwasher in Port Huron bought a 1998 Chevrolet GMT truck [music] for $900 with a broken driver's side door he taped shut to keep out the cold. He said he was looking for something just to transport for work until he could get his taxes in.

[00:05:30]That's the reality on the ground. While dealerships sit on $80,000 inventory they can't move. Now, here's the thing that really bothers me.

[00:05:39]This didn't have to happen. Automakers made a choice. Between 2021 and 2023, the five-truck average surged from $43,803 [music] to $53,500 as semiconductor shortages crippled production. Inventory collapsed, and manufacturers chose to prioritize their most profitable, highest trim units rather than restore entry-level availability. And they had an excuse during the pandemic. Supply chains were wrecked. Chip shortages were real. But when production came back, they didn't bring back the affordable models. They doubled down on premium. Supply chains have mostly normalized, yet prices haven't come back down. Why? Cuz the margins are too good. Reports show the profit figure at Ford to be north of $10,000 per F-150 during the last decade. When you're making that kind of money per unit, why would you go back to building base models? So now we have this bizarre situation where truck sales are technically still strong at the top end, but collapsing at the bottom. An industry partner at consulting firm Plante Moran said in January 2026 that we're now relying on the extremely wealthy to generate the sales, calling it a structural problem from an affordability perspective. New car sales ended 2025 at 16.3 million after being above 17 million annually before 2020.

[00:07:20]The wealthy can still afford trucks. Everybody else is getting priced out. And the really troubling part? The manufacturers know this.

[00:07:29]Dealership lots are overflowing with unsold inventory, including over 25,000 RAM trucks that have been sitting on car lots for hundreds of days. They see the data, they see the inventory piling up, and they're [music] still not adjusting.

[00:07:49]Because honestly, I think they're waiting for everyone else to break first. It's like a game of chicken.

[00:07:55]Nobody wants to be the first brand to slash prices and admit the party's over.

[00:07:59]So, they just keep building these absurdly expensive trucks and hoping demand catches up. Except demand isn't catching up. It's going in the opposite direction. Consumers aren't buying with MSRPs up 42% since 2019.

[00:08:15]Trucks that used to cost $30,000 like the Toyota Tacoma SR5 now carry price tags closer to $43,000.

[00:08:24]The average negative equity on vehicles in the US is $7,200 up from $6,600 just a few months ago. One in five car owners owes $10,000 more on their auto loan than their vehicle is worth. Um people are underwater on their current vehicles. They can't afford to trade up.

[00:08:49][music] And the new prices are so high that even if they could trade, the math doesn't work. So, what happens next?

[00:08:57]Well, the electric truck experiment already crashed. Sales of the Ford F-150 Lightning collapsed by 60% in Q4 2025.

[00:09:08]And by February 2026, sales plummeted 76.3% leading Ford to officially end production of the current all-electric model. [music] Tesla sold 20,237 Cybertrucks in 2025, down from 38,965 [music] the previous year. Turns out buyers rejected $70,000 electric trucks even faster than they're rejecting $80,000 gas trucks. So, we're left with this weird standoff.

[00:09:45]Manufacturers won't build affordable trucks. Buyers won't pay luxury prices.

[00:09:51]Inventory keeps stacking up, and everyone's just waiting to see who blinks first. What you need to understand is the truck market isn't experiencing some temporary slowdown.

[00:10:02]This is a fundamental break between what trucks cost and what people can actually pay. And until one side moves, those lots are going to keep filling up with trucks nobody wants. The thing is, I don't think this ends cleanly. Markets don't self-correct when profit motives are this strong.

[00:10:22]The chicken tax preserved the American auto industry by preventing foreign competitors from making inroads on profitable trucks. But, it also means there's no downward pressure on truck prices in America. Existing manufacturers can rake in profits and focus [music] on fully loaded trucks without fear of being undercut on price.

[00:10:45]>> [music] >> There's no competition pushing prices down. There's no regulatory pressure forcing affordability. There's just a lot of steel sitting in the sun, depreciating by the day, while the average worker drives a 20-year-old beater with a taped-up door. And that tells you everything you need to know about where [music] this market is heading.