Just like choosing a work truck is important, so is placing an accurate asset value during the truck valuation that should reflect the value of the truck service body. What is a truck body? It is an assembly that attaches to a truck chassis for a great variety of applications such as construction use, towing, firefighting, medical, food or chemical transport amongst many more.

When a truck manufacturer assigns a vehicle identification number to a commercial truck, that VIN holds a certain level of detail about that truck. Not only does the VIN decode the Manufacturer, Model, and Year, it can also tell underwriters, appraisers, or fleet managers and owners if the vehicle in question is a complete or an incomplete truck. Incomplete trucks are typically further customized with various truck bodies for a wide range of specialty applications such as construction, food transport, utilities, medical transport, etc. Just like the OEMs do not manufacture the truck bodies, truck body suppliers do not manufacture the vehicle itself. Rather, they build a task-specific assembly that attaches to the chassis of the vehicle. Truck bodies are designed to match vehicle-specific specifications, however, and are often custom-built.

The differences in truck Cost New (MSRP) between an incomplete and complete version of the same vehicle can be drastic and increase the overall value of the vehicle up to 184% for certain concrete mixers.

The users of the Price Digests API’s and online software are empowered with knowledge of whether a VIN-based vehicle valuation represents a complete or incomplete truck. When a VIN number lookup returns vehicle data to the user, the Specifications section indicates whether the vehicle is Complete (C) or Incomplete (I) thus giving an opportunity to the underwriter to ask the insured what type of body the truck has on it:

Effective August 6, 2019, the truck body taxonomy offered through Price Digests will be further expanded to the following categories:

Custom truck body values are available within our API and online software. This video tutorial shows how the truck body option can be added to any truck valuation in the Price Digests Online Software: https://pricedigests.com/resource-library/product-guides/custom-truck-bodies-valuation-tutorial/

If you have any questions about how to use truck body valuations, please contact [email protected]

Nadia Davis
Brand Marketing Manager

Price Digests
Asset Intelligence
Infrastructure intelligence | informa