Why Used Diesel Truck Values Refuse To Drop For Smart Hunters

If someone tells you to skip the new trucks and look for something older, something with proven reliability, selling at a low price, that’s good advice. Unfortunately, if we’re talking diesel, it’s getting harder and harder to find old Ram 2500s and Ford F-250s cheap. Put simply, the people who own these trucks know exactly what they’ve got.

Let’s Take A Look At The Used Diesel Market

To see what we’re talking about, let’s compare some used diesel trucks to their gas-powered siblings.

Based on typical listing prices for models in the 150,000-mile range, diesel-powered trucks uniformly sell for at least a few thousand dollars more than their gas-powered twins. In some cases, the difference is pretty dramatic.

Check out the 2015 Ram 2500 SLT with four-wheel drive. That one’s powered by a Cummins 6.7-liter turbodiesel V8, sort of a holy grail among diesel buyers for its longevity and power delivery. With diesel power, you’re looking at a difference of $9,480, with everything else being equal. Same condition, same mileage, same options, but add a Cummins to the mix, and you’re spending nearly $10,000 more on the purchase.

To get an idea of what typical depreciation looks like for gas versus diesel, we can take a look at a 10-year-old Ford F-250 and see how the prices shake out. Back in 2016, the addition of a 6.7-liter Power Stroke Turbodiesel V8 would have been an $8,480 upgrade, which gives us the following numbers…

At a glance, the difference in depreciation looks fairly marginal, but consider that the diesel is still commanding a $5,900 premium over the gas-powered variant after 10 years and 150,000 miles. Bearing that in mind, the engine itself is still worth 70% of its initial option price.

It’s A Seller’s Market Out There

Credit: Stellantis

Ultimately, older diesel trucks bear all the characteristics of a seller’s market. The primary driver is, of course, buyer demand. To take it from diesel fans themselves, a user in the r/Powerstroke subreddit says of the 2011 6.7 engine “I’m at 300,000 miles, and my boss has a 2011 with 600,000 miles, all original everything.”

A 6.7 Cummins owner claims 340,000 miles before the first breakdown, in the r/Cummins subreddit, and one driver reports a 2005 model with 600,000 miles on the odometer.

It’s difficult to find a bad review or a reliability horror story when it comes to these older diesel engines. Buyers want them, and owners are hesitant to part with them. Add that to proven reliability well past the point where a gas engine would have given up the ghost, and a timeline of increasingly restrictive EPA regulations, and you have a perfect recipe for high resale prices.

The EPA Has Certainly Played A Part In Driving Diesel Prices Up

Credit: Ram

To some extent, you can tie the slow depreciation of diesel-powered pickups to increasingly tight EPA emissions laws. DPFs, or diesel particulate filters, became standard in 2007, for instance, intended to trap black carbon soot, ensuring cleaner exhaust emissions. Many truck owners swear by pre-2007 engines like the LBZ Duramax, for this reason.

2027 will bring another major choke point, with the EPA dictating that new engines for commercial applications must reduce NOx emissions by roughly 90% below current limits. This primarily affects big rigs and the like, but is expected to have a ripple effect on light-duty trucks.

It wouldn’t be accurate to lay this all at the EPA’s feet, though. The demand for diesel-powered work trucks in fleet use and rural areas plays a part, and there’s the simple fact that, because diesel trucks are so reliable, owners keep their trucks for longer, meaning there are fewer used models available to begin with, meaning prices stay nice and high, because buyers don’t have a lot of options.

Sources: Ford, Stellantis, General Motors, Alan Baum, Baum & Associates.

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This article originally appeared on CarBuzz and is republished here with permission.