Most of what moves a tractor's price does not apply to the box behind it. A dry van is an insulated-nothing: a steel or aluminium box on wheels, close to a commodity. A reefer, a refrigerated van, carries a diesel cooling unit with its own hours, its own emissions rules and its own failure modes. A flatbed follows construction and energy. None of them has a model-year emissions ladder, a MaxxForce, or a 400,000-mile cliff. So they should be priced on their own clock, and the data says they are.
What the last two years looked like
| Report (data month) | All trailers, auction | Reefer | Other detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 2024 (November) | Down 16.5 percent; the 27th consecutive month of decline | Auction down 33.4 percent; asking down 27.1 percent | Flatbed inventory up 23.1 percent |
| April 2025 (March) | Down 3.1 percent | Auction down 13.0 percent | Asking down 8.4 percent overall |
| June 2025 (May) | Up 2.1 percent, the first rise | Not broken out | Flatbed auction up 3.7 percent; dry van down 5.3 percent on the month |
| April 2026 (March) | Up 1.4 percent; inventory down 27.0 percent | Auction up 6.1 percent on the month | Dry van auction still down 11.0 percent |
| September 2026 (August) | Up 11.5 percent; inventory down 31.4 percent; asking up 5.9 percent | Inventory down 48.3 percent; asking up 10.5 percent; auction up 21.8 percent | Inventory up 0.7 percent on the month, the first rise in a long run of declines |
Read the reefer column. From minus 33 percent to plus 22 percent in twenty-one months is a swing no tractor segment matched. Dry vans went the other way for most of that period and only turned positive on asking prices in 2026. The two most common trailer types were, for a year and a half, telling opposite stories.
The dispersal that muddied the water
Part of the 2024 trough had a single cause. When the carrier Yellow failed in 2023, its rolling stock went through auction over the following two years: about 35,000 trailers and 12,000 tractors, roughly 58,000 transactions, for 236 million dollars gross and 176 million net. That is about 4,000 dollars a lot, which tells you what the equipment was: old 28-foot pups and single-axle day cabs. J.D. Power noted in early 2024 that the liquidation was "impacting market conditions, particularly for trailers and the single-axle daycabs." Because the release was staged rather than dumped, the effect is confounded with the wider trailer downturn, and nobody has separated the two.
Why a reefer swings harder
A reefer is two machines. The box depreciates like any van. The refrigeration unit is a diesel engine with a meter, and its hours, its emissions compliance and its service history decide whether the trailer can carry a load that must stay cold. Demand for reefers tracks the cold chain, groceries, pharmaceuticals and produce, which does not move with general freight. And the supply of good used reefers is thin, because fleets run them until the unit is tired. Thin supply, separate demand, and a second engine: that is a recipe for volatility, and the data shows about twice the swing of a dry van.
A trailer is not a truck without an engine. It is a different asset with a different calendar, and a reefer is two assets bolted together.
Sources opened
- 1Sandhills Global market report, December 2024 · Trailer auction values down 27 consecutive months; reefer down 33.4 percent
- 2Sandhills Global market report, April 2025 · Trailer values in March 2025
- 3Sandhills Global market report, June 2025 · The first year-over-year rise in trailer auction values
- 4Sandhills Global market report, April 2026 · Trailer inventory down 27 percent; dry van still falling
- 5Sandhills Global market report, September 2026, via Monitor Daily · August 2026 trailer and reefer figures
- 6FreightWaves, Yellow's final liquidation report, September 2025 · Units, transactions and proceeds
- 7FleetOwner, equipment market braces for Yellow's sales, September 2023 · Initial estimates of the fleet size
- 8J.D. Power, auction pricing turned downward in February, March 2024 · The liquidation "impacting market conditions, particularly for trailers and the single-axle daycabs"