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Hey everyone,
This week, we're breaking down what the latest Black Book data tells us about auction prices and what it means for dealers buying and stocking heading into Q4.
— CDG
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0.73%: How much overall wholesale values fell for the week ending Oct. 3.
$156: How much trucks and SUVs lost per vehicle last week (0.80%), vs. $87 for cars (0.52%).
$414: How much minivans lost per vehicle (2.40%), after a 2.16% drop the week before. It's the first back-to-back decline of this size since August 2023.
(Source: Black Book)
Wholesale prices are still falling, with trucks, SUVs, and minivans losing value faster than cars.
Wholesale prices, also known as what dealers pay for vehicles at auction, fell again last week.
For the week ending Oct. 3, Black Book's weekly wholesale data for 2-to-8-year-old vehicles shows:
Overall market: down 0.73%, after a 0.71% drop the week before.
Trucks and SUVs: down 0.80% (-$156), the same as the week before.
Cars: down 0.52% (-$87), after a 0.48% drop the week before.
Sourced via Black Book (Blue = Cars / Orange = Trucks/SUVs / Black = Combined)
Looking at specific segments (2-to-8-year-old vehicles):
Minivan values were down 2.40% ($414 per vehicle), following a 2.16% drop the week before. Per Black Book, it's the first back-to-back decline of this size since August 2023.
Similarly, full-size crossover values were down 1.79% ($488 per vehicle), their biggest weekly decline since December 2023.
And compact cars were down 0.93% ($108 per vehicle), their biggest weekly decline since November 2025, compared with 0.52% for cars overall.
Why this is happening: Cox Automotive, speaking about its own September wholesale data, pointed out that there wasn't an Atlantic hurricane in September for the first time in decades, which usually gives used-vehicle demand a lift, and that diesel prices also hit record highs.
Both, per Cox Automotive's Jeremy Robb, may be contributing to "hotter" depreciation seen in recent data.
NOTE TO DEALERS:
Wholesale values are historically at their weakest in Q4, and with what Robb mentioned, they could trend even lower than normal. Not a guarantee, but it's worth having someone in the dealership aware of and tracking this.
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As we enter Q4, I want to highlight different acquisition tactics dealers have shared with the CDG team this year.
Here are some of their Dos and Don'ts.
Do: Staff an acquisition team that doesn't sell cars.
Greg Heinz, managing partner at Corwin Toyota Boulder, said on Daily Dealer Live Sept. 25 that most of his group's stores have an off-street purchase team. At his store, three to four people handle it.
"They're strictly acquisition people."
Greg Heinz
Heinz said the team might run 50 to 70 off-street purchases a month by browsing Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and Autotrader ads. A salesperson only gets involved once the seller signals they need a replacement vehicle.
He said the store also uses AutoHub to text offers to service customers, which accounts for about 20 purchases a month, off the street or through the service drive.
Do: Build a buy center that sources cars straight from consumers.
Rob Dell, vice president at Bob Ruth Ford in Dillsburg, Pa., said on Daily Dealer Live July 29 that his store had no auction cars in stock. Nearly everything came from trades or directly from people selling their cars.
How it works:
Five reps contact sellers and collect vehicle information.
A separate inventory team appraises the cars, because Dell said speed always wins.
The store picks cars up from sellers within about 300 miles and offers several ways to pay.
Dell's advice for finding those reps is not to hire people with a car background.
“Facebook Marketplace is a great place. There's always tons of inventory, but you can't limit yourself to that. There's other channels, there's other avenues. Some people would say eBay's not an avenue. It's still listing, right? Whether it's eBay, Autotrader, whatever the platform is. If you're in a military area, there's military sites where people need to liquidate cars when they're moving around the country or the world. You gotta have open eyes.”
Rob Dell
Do: Know your favorite lanes and sellers.
Bill Solko, owner and dealer principal at Automotive Avenues in New Jersey, shared on an episode of the Car Dealership Guy podcast that he knows his favorite lanes and sellers and buys through those channels regularly.
“My favorite lanes, my favorite sellers, whether they're other dealers, new-car dealers in a lot of cases, institutional sellers, you know. When you're buying in those lanes every week, very often you'll see the same car.”
Bill Solko
Why this works: Seeing the same cars and sellers repeatedly gives him context on what a seller is likely to move and when they may be ready to let a car go.
Don’t: Make the customer pay for your mistake.
Solko’s view is that if you overpay for a car, that’s your mistake, not the customer’s. He also doesn’t believe you can simply make up for a bad acquisition by asking the next customer to pay more.
“If you buy it wrong, that's on you,” he said. “You can't expect the customer to pay more because you paid too much.”
Wholesale values follow a fairly predictable rhythm, give or take. Prices start climbing in January as dealers get ahead of tax refund demand, peak in March and April when the refunds hit, then ease through the summer.
Depreciation then picks up in the fall, and the softness carries into early next year.
Black Book's Laura Wehunt told our team in August that this year should see similar.
"What we're projecting is around 12% annual depreciation for the year 2026, so very normal depreciation on an annual basis. But to have that normal depreciation on an annual basis, we are going to see a little higher depreciation in the third and fourth quarters."
That's all the more reason to have people in the store who know the pattern and have a plan for it, so the dealership doesn't overpay or give up margin it didn't have to.
