Secondary truck market in Ukraine: Average prices and age in sales offers and dynamics of their change in 2024

Most of the news in the automotive sector is related to passenger cars, while commercial vehicles are often ignored or only discussed in narrow-profile publications. Letʼs try to correct this not entirely fair situation with a series of studies specifically on the truck segment. This time, we will look at how the average prices and average age in truck sales ads changed over the past year, and why.

Dynamics of the average age of trucks

During 2024, there was an interesting trend of decreasing average age of trucks. If at the beginning of the year this indicator was 17.4 years, then by December it decreased to 16.2 years. The average age reached its highest value in May, amounting to 19.5 years, after which a gradual decrease began. For comparison, in the secondary market of passenger cars this indicator is about 16 years.

If we rely on economic theory, the decrease in the average age is possible due to the import of newer models (in the second half of the year), which "dilutes" the supply with newer options; the seasonal nature of demand: owners of older cars are more active in placing ads for sale in the spring-summer period, which temporarily increases the average age in the ad base; and the growing interest in modern cars among companies seeking to reduce maintenance and fuel costs, to which the market responds by offering appropriate products.

However, the Ukrainian market once again proves that the events taking place on it do not fit into any of the known theories. And each time we have to look for new, non-standard explanations for these processes. In particular, regarding the average age — its decrease is associated with relatively low purchasing power and stagnation of the segment as a whole, which ultimately led to the fact that people buy the cheapest options first of all, and accordingly, newer/more expensive ones remain in the ads. Which is reflected in the diagram.

Average price dynamics

The average (median) price of trucks fluctuated in 2024. It started the year at a relatively high $16,000, before gradually declining to $11,400 in June, the lowest point of the year. Starting in July, average prices began to rise, reaching $16,800 in December, the highest point in the period under review.

And again, if we try to explain these processes according to standard rules, we can take into account seasonality of demand, change in supply, or processes related to the import of more expensive models at the end of the year, which pulled our broken line up. However, the answer here is similar to the previous section — or rather, the same, because we are talking about one segment of the same market.

The relationship between age and price

The analysis shows a clear relationship between the age and price of trucks. The decrease in the average age in the ads (especially in the second half of the year) was accompanied by an increase in the average price. This, finally, corresponds to the expected pattern: newer cars are usually more expensive due to lower mileage, better technical condition and more modern equipment. At the same time, we emphasize once again that these processes do not indicate a "rejuvenation" in the segment or an increase in demand for newer models, but are a consequence of the fact that carriers primarily buy cheaper and older trucks.

How can events develop further?

We will not duplicate our own work, because a fairly comprehensive forecast for 2025 from the Institute for Automotive Market Research has already been published, and you can read it by clicking on this link. It should be noted that trucks in this forecast are also divided into subsegments — small commercial vehicles, all cargo groups 3.5+T and tractor units + semi-trailers for them.

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The analysis was performed based on data from the Automoto.ua aggregator, which collects information from all vehicle sales ad sites in Ukraine.