Price Digests is pleased to announce the 2021 Highest Retained Value Award (HRVA) winners. This year’s awards cover nine categories of commercial trucks within light, medium, and heavy-duty, all powered by Price Digests’ industry-leading database. In addition to announcing the 2021 winners, we’ve put together a primer on what these retained values mean and how to integrate them into your buying decisions. Read on to learn more about retained values or skip to the list of winners.

Retained value

Simply put, retained values are what you can anticipate a commercial truck to be worth after a given period of time. For Price Digests’ HRVAs the time horizon we have chosen is five years, so the retained values shown here are the anticipated values for a commercial truck five years from now.

Retained values are inseparable from the concept of depreciation, which is a measure of how far a commercial truck’s value decreases over time. Retained values are an integral part of truck purchase and maintenance. At every step, from the rent/buy decisions to leasing operations and fleet management, knowing and understanding retained values can provide powerful insights into the optimal choice.

Price Digests’ retained values are calculated using market data, depreciation standards, and our proprietary algorithm. For more information on our methodology.

Percentage vs. Dollar Value

Depreciation and retained values are inherently reliant upon purchase price. With so many ways to adjust the value of a commercial truck, which varies based on mileage, region, condition, configuration, and more, it would be difficult to estimate exact dollar values in this analysis to cover every possible variation. Instead, we measure retained values as the average percentage of initial value retained after five years for commercial trucks purchased new or on the used market. For the HRVAs specifically, we based our analysis on newly purchased, current model year assets.

This approach provides you with an apples-to-apples way to compare commercial truck brands and provides us with a clear and unbiased way to choose winners for the HRVAs. Using percentages eliminates confusion when comparing models that may have materially different purchase prices and a model with a higher dollar value at the end of the 5-year-period may have simply started out with a higher original cost.

Award categories

Depreciation and retained values are inherently reliant upon purchase price. With so many ways to adjust the value of a commercial truck, which varies based on mileage, region, condition, configuration, and more, it would be difficult to estimate exact dollar values in this analysis to cover every possible variation. Instead, we measure retained values as the average percentage of initial value retained after five years for commercial trucks purchased new or on the used market. For the HRVAs specifically, we based our analysis on newly purchased, current model year assets.

Within each award category, our analysis focused on the most popular models and we limited our analysis to models still being produced in 2021 to ensure these results can be applied to buying decisions today and throughout the year.

In addition to Price Digests’ HRVAs, our sister brand EquipmentWatch has also announced the winners of their Highest Retained Value Awards for 30 categories of heavy equipment. Read more about our heavy equipment winners.

Price Digests’ HRVA Winner Profiles 

This year, six unique truck manufacturers claimed the top spots across the nine award categories. The winning brands include; Ford, Freightliner, Chevrolet, Hino, Isuzu, and Kenworth. The majority of these brands have secured HRVA victories previously, but Isuzu was new to the awards in 2021. What each winner had in common was that their model, when compared to the competitive models within their award category, had the highest retained value. To illustrate this further and give you a better sense of retained value differences in the commercial truck landscape, we have showcased a few winning models below.

Award Category: Heavy Duty Conventional Day Cab Tractor

Winning Model: Freightliner Cascadia

Freightliner’s Cascadia model was a leader in the Heavy Duty Conventional Day Cab Tractor award category based on market share1 with 33.52% of the observations. The model also secured a victory in terms of retained value for the category with a 5-year retained value of 35.86% versus the category average of 32.44%.

Award Category: Medium Duty Cabover Cab and Chassis 

Winning Model: Isuzu NPR-HD 

Within the Medium Duty Cabover Cab and Chassis award category, Isuzu’s NPR-HD model had a sizeable 30.56% of market share1. The model also had one of the largest margins of retained value over the average with nearly 16 percentage points separating them. Moreover, at 52.17% the 5-year retained value for Isuzu’s NPR-HD model was the third-highest retained value across all nine Price Digests HRVA categories.

Award Category: Light Duty Cab and Chassis 

Winning Model: Ford F250 

Ford is clearly a leader in terms of truck market share1 and within the Light Duty Cab and Chassis award category the Ford F250 claimed 19.07% of the market observations. With a 5-year retained value of 59.28%, the Ford F250 plainly outshined the category average of 46.84%. Besides the win in this category, Ford also secured wins in two other categories (the Ford F350 in the Light Duty Crew Cab and Chassis category and the Ford F550 in the Medium Duty Trucks Crew Cab and Chassis category), which means this popular brand secured one-third of Price Digests HRVA categories for 2021.

View the full list of Price Digests’ Highest Retained Value Awards winners.  

Since 1911 Price Digests, a division of Informa, has served the vehicle data needs of the insurance, finance, government, and dealer markets through its portfolio of VIN decoding, specifications, and market value data solutions for the commercial truck, passenger vehicle, marine, powersport, and recreational vehicle asset classes. Our data insights help enterprises drive competitive advantage through asset data workflow efficiencies while also playing a pivotal role in decisions surrounding the purchase, valuation, operation, and risk mitigation of assets. Price Digests data is powered by The Truck Blue Book. 

[1] Market share calculations based on observed resale channel activity throughout 2020.