The 2026 Conference of Automotive Remarketing convened in Cleveland April 15-16, collocated with NAFA I&E.
The Conference of Automotive Remarketing (CAR) returned this yr at a moment when the industry continues to be recalibrating after several years of disruption. If there was a single theme that surfaced repeatedly throughout the sessions, it was that remarketing today comes right down to velocity plus value.
Held April 15-16 on the Huntington Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, at the side of the NAFA I&E, the 30-year-old conference goes through an evolution.
CAR traditionally connects vehicle consignors, auction decision-makers, suppliers, and industry leaders to debate trends, share best practices, and form partnerships. That continues to be the case, but with a brand new constituency — fleet managers — a key Bobit audience and the explanation for the NAFA partnership.
As a part of this evolution and with this latest attendee group, the academic content dug right into a central theme, in the shape of a matter: Could de-fleeted vehicles return more value when remarketed?
The reply was yes, but tempered with a perennial, real-world market caveat: Speed to market is, and at all times shall be, essential. Velocity plus value.
Storms on the Horizon
Bobit Business Media owner and CEO Colin Sutherland began the conference with a frank warning about several converging threats to fleet remarketing: “This can be a shifting moment within the industry,” he said. “And I feel we have got some storms on the horizon.”
Sutherland identified several converging pressures on fleet remarketing.
The primary is residual value exposure. Vehicles fleeted from 2021 to 2023, when supply chain shortages drove inflated pricing and, consequently, inflated residuals, are actually cycling back. “Those leases are coming due this yr,” Sutherland said, “and the residuals won’t be met.”
The second storm is electrical. An estimated 1.1 million off-lease EVs are expected to enter the remarketing pipeline over the subsequent three years, and the environment they enter is complex.
Political headwinds have depressed EV sentiment, and automakers are either quelling investment or have exited the market entirely, which only adds to long-term uncertainty. And the normal remarketing infrastructure — auction lanes, condition reports, valuation guides — was not built with battery-electric vehicles in mind.
He also brought up Amazon Auto, which launched in August 2025. Ultimately, used fleet units may compete with price-driven Amazon within the digital retail space. Yet the auctions aren’t as anxious, with their ability to deliver scale and liquidity that latest digital platforms simply can’t.
But, as Sutherland said, “Each time Amazon enters an area, you higher be anxious.”
Sutherland also highlighted the important thing point in CAR’s evolving direction: Invaluable upfits, resembling specialized bodies and interior packages, together with equipment like telematics and cameras, are routinely stripped before vehicles go to auction, destroying value that might be passed on to secondary buyers.
The following two seminars demonstrated that the information needed to properly value fleet vehicles already exists. The challenge is getting it to flow to the best buyers at the best time.
Where Do Used Fleet Vehicles Flow?
Within the keynote address, Mark Hazel of S&P Global Mobility brought latest metrics to CAR: the power to cross-reference vehicle registration data, upfit configurations, business demographics, and VIN-decoded specifications concurrently on the individual-vehicle level.
Combined, this data tracks a fleet vehicle not only as a chassis with a registration history, but as an upfitted configuration operated by a particular variety of business, in a particular geography, with a purchasing history.
Hazel specifically presented S&P data that showed how and where fleet vehicles flowed into the wholesale market.
The info provided a pointy contrast between how the new- and used-fleet markets actually function. On the brand new vehicle side, the rental industry is the dominant force — accounting for nearly half of all business latest vehicle registrations in a typical yr.
However the used vehicle market is totally different. Rental essentially disappears as a buyer of used vehicles, replaced overwhelmingly by private business fleets. Not surprisingly, smaller fleets (under 100 vehicles) account for 90% of all business fleets on the road and half of all fleet vehicles, they usually disproportionately depend on the used market.
Surge in Used Fleet Registrations
Hazel’s registration data across vehicle classes showed that light trucks and Class 1 vehicles spiked dramatically in the course of the COVID supply chain crisis — jumping from roughly 56,000 used registrations in 2019 to over 159,000 in 2022 — then pulled back meaningfully by 2025, suggesting that portion of the surge was situational.
Meanwhile, a 2025-specific tariff effect drove one other situational surge — a measurable spike in purchases of used medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. That is the brand new reality, where macroeconomic policy translates into fleet buying behavior almost immediately.
Class 2 vehicles, covering cargo vans and bigger pickups, told a distinct story: demand kept growing through 2025, reaching nearly 146,000 units, indicating sustained structural demand fairly than a short lived disruption response.
Medium-duty vehicles (Classes 3 through 7) roughly doubled or higher across the identical period, with Class 3 nearly tripling.
The general ratio of used-fleet registrations to latest registrations rose from 10% in 2019 to a peak of 20% in 2022, then settled at 16% in 2025. That 16% is now the brand new normal — demonstrating a measurable industry shift to used units as a source for fleets.
Understanding the True Value of an Upfit
If Hazel’s presentation established that the information exists to properly discover and value upfitted business vehicles, Kathryn Schifferle — founder and chief vision officer of Work Truck Solutions — demonstrated in dollars how much those upfitted units might be value with smarter remarketing.
In her session, she presented a real-world example of a crane body truck marketed through a general auction lane that sold for $72,050. The identical truck, marketed online to buyers trying to find a crane body, sold for $97,995.
That $25,945 difference had nothing to do with reconditioning or market timing; it was purely by finding the best buyer. Schifferle’s data on combo bodies showed a consistent 23% price premium when work trucks are sold through targeted online channels in comparison with general auctions.
The breadth of what constitutes value in a business vehicle is something the overall remarketing market consistently underestimates, Schifferle said. The upfit content on a piece truck represents real capital investment by the unique fleet operator, yet isn’t communicated to the secondary buyer in a typical auction transaction.
Recouping the True Value of an Upfit
So, methods to recuperate that value? By planning — specifically, occupied with the second buyer in the mean time of the primary purchase. Understanding the very best use-case configuration for a vehicle means concurrently considering who the most definitely secondary buyer shall be and what that buyer will value.
Modular, non-structural upfits that serve the operational need without permanently altering the vehicle’s underlying structure will appeal to a broader secondary market. Alternative cycles designed around total cost of ownership — not only operational convenience — create natural disposition windows before condition deteriorates and maintenance costs begin to erode value.
The second level is execution — and that is where the geographic pricing data she presented became immediately actionable. Her state-by-state price grids for Class 3 and 4 vehicles showed variances of as much as $28,000 for a similar body type across different markets, with Pennsylvania consistently showing the bottom prices for box trucks and North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia commanding the best.
For Class 5, 6, and seven vehicles, the spread widened further — as much as $50,000 between the weakest and strongest markets for certain body configurations.
Schifferle floated the concept of pre-retirement marketing: fairly than waiting until a vehicle is able to be disposed of after which consigning it to the closest available channel, she advocated for targeted outreach to prospective end users 90 days before a vehicle’s planned retirement.
When Volume Matters
The case for digital marketing is compelling on a per-unit basis. But Pierre Pons, president of TPC Management and a CAR supporter for the reason that conference’s inception, offered a essential antidote within the Q&A of the session: the mathematics changes once you’re moving volume.
Realizing the $26k upfit premium on the crane truck assumes you may have the time, infrastructure, and staffing to discover that buyer, market to them, negotiate the transaction, handle the title work, and manage the logistics of that sale.
For a fleet operator disposing of a handful of specialty units a yr, that investment can pencil out. For a rental company, a big FMC, or any consignor moving lots of or hundreds of units through the remarketing pipeline on a compressed timeline, the calculus is fundamentally different. Physical auctions exist precisely because no other channel can absorb that volume at the identical speed, with the identical reliability, and with the identical transactional certainty.
Pons made the purpose that transactional certainty matters. When a vehicle crosses the auction block, the worth it achieves is the worth the market will actually bear — not the worth a targeted listing hoped to attain, or an asking price that sat for 60 days and not using a qualified buyer.
Pons’s argument was not that digital channels lack merit — it was that they serve a distinct a part of the issue.
The comment once more reinforced the conference’s central theme: Velocity plus value.
The following and final CAR recap shall be published on Thursday, April 30.
This Article First Appeared At www.automotive-fleet.com
