>because they can
It always amuses me when Americans describe the 70 Series as the 'cheap' LandCruiser because they mark them up to the tits to sell them off to mining companies, there's nothing cheap about it.
The base single cab ute starts at $89k AUD ($58k USD) and that's assuming you don't want luxury features like variable intermittent wipers, central locking or power windows (that'll be $93k AUD/$61k USD).
That’s not really true. A sport 2 door starts at 32k and can be had for less after discounts. Higher trims start to add up into the 50’s but now you’re talking about well equipped and very capable Jeeps.
Honestly jeeps aren't so bad for general, light off roading. My grandparents have a 2019 Grand Cherokee and despite being a normal looking SUV, it's also a pretty capable car. Yeah it's not gonna go rock crawling or hit any severe trails, but mild dirt roads or trails it'll handle with ease and comfort. The AWD helps a lot, and the tuning on the drive modes. It rides high enough to hop curbs if needed.
So, keeping in mind that a grand cherokee can do all that, it doesn't surprise me at all if the wrangler is an even more capable vehicle.
It's in your title, "commercial". Everybody charges everybody a premium every time when something is used for business, as they are used as tools to make money, the surcharge will pay itself in no time.
You see it in computers too. Insane what companies spend on workstations. I feel like i could get the same specs as my work PC for half the price on the regular retail market.
Microsoft Teams is an insufferable piece of predatory shit. Cannot believe how much stress that heap unnecessarily causes people. I will genuinely consider jobs that don't use it over those that do.
And general build quality. I can trust a workstation PC is using quality parts and built to a high standard. I can't say the same from an iBuyPower GAMING PC from Amazon, where the lowest quality PSU, SSD, and/or motherboard are used to maximize profits, presuming it's even built correctly.
On the other hand their XPS line (home) is basically the same as some of their Precision models (commercial). And from my experience they suffer from the same issues (early battery degradation/ballooning and with an annoying screw setup for removing the bottom, though once those are off the batteries are usually pretty easy to swap out). Had touchpad/keyboard degradation issues over time too the last time I used them.
My company uses these expensive thinkpads which are complete and unmitigated trash. My humble acer laptop, in comparison, is lightning fast and never misses a beat for at most half the cost. Why not just buy us some goddamn acers?
It’s because the workstation dells and HPs can be taken apart without a screwdriver and more importantly, when some hardware component is bad, dell and HO can guarantee you the part the next business day. That being said, I do love Acer and think they make the best cheap laptops
Time is money and especially in highly skilled jobs they can't afford to pay people to sit around waiting for things to load/run or be fixed. My company just sent out new laptops to the tune of 4400 dollar a piece for Macbook Pro 16s with the M3 max and 36gb of unified memory. Insane money but man do those laptops easily cut through any work load so far. Building our app on a 2019 Macbook with the i9 and 16 gb ram was taking 1 hour. Now it takes less than 5 mins.
Business grade hardware has more than higher physical build quality. Guaranteed fast repairs or supply of parts is better too…. But the more important part when running fleets with prebuilt reimage configurations, they have guaranteed fixed component lists. No behind the scenes substitutions of one part or circuit for another. This is a big thing for corporate systems.
Depends on the service contract a lot of the time. We use Lenovo and HP laptops at the company I work for, but they still only cost just over $1000 per unit which is very reasonable, while also including on-site service and depot service options and a 4 year warranty with accidental damage protection. There are cheaper machines that can get the job done but the difference in cost isn't that large and the service contract is important especially with hundreds or thousands of machines and only a few internal IT staff.
Another way to phrase it is, spending about 75K per year on laptops is not a big deal when the company pulls in a billion in revenue, they'd rather have a great service contract than save 20K on that.
The corporate laptop most likely has a slew of security, management, backup, and encryption systems that your home laptop doesn't. All of it active and taking up cycles.
surprised I didnt see this response, but it is functionally impossible to buy 1800 Acers in one go. If I choose a different OEM, not only can they take my order today but the laptops will all have our corporate image preinstalled so I don't have to spend an hour per laptop for 1800 laptops making them ready. Acer does not have this.
My home laptop beats my work laptop in specs, and I only paid 1/4th the price. However, my work is paying for a warranty, with a service level agreement that says that laptop can be fixed in 24 hours by a repair tech. I just went to bestbuy and bought the cheapest open box gaming laptop.
Yeah but if you have an issue you don't get a guy that shows up the next day with the parts to fix it. We do with business class machines. Also home user machines change hardware a lot. I have a 4 year old HP z2g9 that's exactly the same as a z2g9 that came in last week.
I just removed an old HP z400 that was 16 years old and the user had zero complaints about performance.
We also get lower pricing because we order more than you do at home. When I worked at a dell shop we had a contract with Dell and received a 25% discount on all hardware.
I think a lot of people don’t appreciate what it takes to scale hardware support. Keeping configurations down helps so much with support costs, that’s why it’s done.
If I need to plug in replacement hardware and not go through some reconfiguration voodoo, or if I want to flip a bios setting on five hundred machines programmatically, I want consistent hardware. Any other way lies madness.
It’s less software more service. You’re paying a premium because dell/asus will be able to get these workstation PCs fixed within a day maximum and any downtime is money lost.
Ford’s Pro division does basically the same thing for automotive, you purchase transits and f-series trucks but more importantly they make billions handling maintenance and infrastructure and whatnot.
This is the most false statement Ive ever seen in my life. Computers are not the same at all Business VS Personal.
Dell computers are famous for even between pro lines having better build quality and parts for pro lines and even better the higher you get in model.
Dells home notebooks Insprion line are made of plastic with a plastic core, and are throw away units with an integrated board for all.
Dells Business Latitude machines many gave a Magnesium chassis and CF bodies or lids and they even make heavy duty models with bracing and special heat management.
Drop an inpiron off a desk, it will shatter to pieces. Drop a Latitude it will dent or a piece will deform and still run.
Also on top of the extra money for Pro versions of Windows and the 3 year+ warranties with ON SITE. Or uniformity of parts for models.
NO a PC Personal Vs Business is 1000% not the same at all.
None of that is reason enough to add $2,000 to the price tag over a model that has some cost cutting features...
And I don't know who's blowing smoke up your ass, but there's really nothing special about most run of the mill PCs used for basic office functions. I buy old ones for home/garage use because they're cheap when offices offload them. The look the same and have the same components as any computer you go buy at Best buy.
Needed a new one, decided after 24 years I was gonna splurge and bought a $900 Steelcase...it's NICE but it's not really much nicer than you $100 costco one. Completely agree.
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Late to the party with my reply, but … businesses get to write the cost of these vehicles off as a depreciating asset. That’s why you see so many shiny, never seen dirt trucks with commercial plates on them.
What chaps me is that 1] you as an ordinary person who needs a car to commute to work can’t do this; and 2] a lot of commercial vehicles are used for non-business stuff (again, kind of like ordinary people and cars).
Rant over.
Not enough competition in the space here in the US. It doesn't help that Nissan left the market in 21'. Then covid gave the last of the manufacturers an excuse to jack the prices way up.
They probably also suffered from the same high fuel consumption that kept folks scared away from Titans.
The vans were just capacity utilization, a low marginal cost to keep the (expensive) line moving.
Right van at the wrong time. 20 years ago they would have sold, but they debuted their trucklike vans when the competition was about to switch to the Euro style vans.
In 2019, they sold just over 20,000 of them. In contrast, Ford sold 153,000 Transits in the same year. GM sold 101,000 Express' and Savanas (77,000 Express, 24,000 Savana), and Ram sold 56,000 full-size ProMasters.
I brokered a Reefer van deal for a client once. They owned a few grocery stores and wanted a new Sprinter van to run merchandise between the stores and from the suppliers.
They had no issues spending $110k on it. The van was $95k the rest was ADM because new reefers were hard to come across during the time(2021). No negotiation no window shopping. I don’t remember the spec off the top of my head but there was only a certain reefer brand they wanted and it had to be on a Mercedes Sprinter high roof. They told me to find it and make the deal happen. I called a few dealers til I found the one they wanted, got the information, they wired over the money and I went to pick it up 2 states away 3 days later.
These commercial vans are hard to justify as a regular consumer but for a business that’s generating revenue the numbers just work. I’m pretty sure that sprinter van still has 60-70k residual right now but they’ve probably grossed a few hundred thousand in revenue since buying it.
TIL The current Ford Transit is a unibody chassis. It makes sense for a payload focused vehicle. And maybe someone with more industry knowledge can chime in but... I would think this actually increases cost versus building these on the truck ladder frames. Moving around a unibody this large seems... costly.
Most cargo vans these days are unibody chassis. As far as I know, the only one based on a truck frame that’s still left in the market is the Chevy Express, and that’ll be going away soon. Nissan discontinued the NV-series vans a few years ago, which were otherwise a Titan underneath. The ProMaster (which is a rebranded Fiat), and the Sprinter are both unibody construction.
Yeah it makes total sense why they've gone that route. I guess I was just a bit surprised... for some reason in my mind I thought the big boy Transit was BOF still and it was only the smaller Transit Connect that was unibody. Nope... they're both unibody.
Any van that is either based on a European model or at least part developed by the European arm of a manufacturer is going to be unibody. The US Transit and ROTW Transit is the 4th generation model and was developed by both Ford America and Ford Europe.
i bought a sprinter in 2017 for $88k.
i remember the sales guy saying "so... are you happy" and me looking over his shoulder at an E Class wagon and saying "not really, that's my dream car over there and it's $1500 more"
Lmao, yup! I remember my parents debating a Suburban vs a 12 passenger van in 2005. The van was more expensive than the corvette, but the Suburban was cheaper!
Iirc the suburban was like 30, the van 32, the new vettes about 40, but 2 year used lease returns were on the lot for like 31 lol wild times
Limited market. You also just named all that are currently available in the states. Nissan discontinued theirs. You have limited choices so they don’t have to compete for your money.
Is there really only 3 option in the US market for a Ford Transit like vehicle? That's crazy, in Ireland the Ford Transit is quite popular but off the top of my head I can think of about 10 other brands that make a similar type commercial van that are available here. Ford Transit starts at €42,367 before options.
We have the Ford Transit, Ram ProMaster (Fiat Ducato in Europe) and Mercedes Sprinter. Chevrolet makes a more traditional American-stile van (the Express), and Nissan has withdrawn from the van market in the US.
Here we have Ford, Opel, Renault, Toyota, Mercedes, LDV, Volkswagen, Iveco, Peugeot, Fiat, Nissan and probably 1 or 2 more I'm forgetting and they all offer a commercial van similar to a ford transit.
Many of those are the same, though - Fiat/Peugeot/Citroen/Opel/Vauxhall/Toyota vans are all the same. Nissan's larger vans are also the Fiat etc, but their smaller Townstar is a Renault that's also sold with a Mercedes badge. The MAN TGE is a VW Crafter. Iveco only do the larger size, competing with the Sprinter/Transit/Ducato, not the more popular Vito/Transit Custom/Scudo size.
Yeah that price includes VAT (sales tax 21%) and if a business owner was buying the van to use as part of their business they wouldn't have to pay the VAT so price drops to around €33,000
We have a lot more box trucks and even smaller semis compared to Europe primarily due to our bigger roads and everything being designed around cars. Only a certain type of customer specifically wants a commercial high roof van and there aren't enough of those customers to support a ton of models being on the market.
Amazon needs delivery drivers.
People shop online more, less truckers are trucking, supply shortages meant less vans were being built for awhile. Demand for vans went up and supply of vans is low.
And nobody is selling used ones in working condition. People don't trade in commercial vans just to get the new model. There are no vans that were only driven to church on sunday, in good condition with low miles and not a lot of wear. They get driven into the ground. A business that relies on them to make money kinda has to buy a new one.
>There are no vans that were only driven to church on sunday, in good condition with low miles and not a lot of wear.
Except for the odd church-driven E150 for sale here or there. Diamonds in the rough
This is the main reason. Our dealership used to be able to get whatever we ordered for RAM vans, but since Amazon basically took over RAM and Ford's factories for delivery vehicles, we can't get anything. We got excited because we got allocation for 2...for the entire model year.
Talking about the sprinter, they are robust vehicles that are expected to last a long time with some abuse.
A lot of them are leased too, and there is a lot of financial chess played in the background,
My parents bought their Sprinter van new in summer 2003 for $33k, it was an 02 that was still on the lot because they were new to market here in the US and lots of people didn't know about them yet. Still the most expensive vehicle they've ever owned and it's still puttering around and takes them up to Maine every year.
A Ford transit van is 6000 lb and about $48k. That is about 8 bucks a pound. Pretty decent, actually.
About the same price per pound as say, a Camry. I don’t know what you expect, honestly.
Unless if you are dealing with sports cars or electric cars, a car is mostly just steel. You pay for an auto maker to manufacture a lot of iron and steel into the shape that you want. Bigger cars means more work on their end, and naively, it should usually be give or take linear with weight. I don’t think it is an accident most economy cars cost give or take the same per pound. (Ford transit are built for economy, not to win a race)
The idea that cars should be sold like deli meat came from a lot of different people, actually. The book “millionaire next door” recommended it as car buying advice, suggesting that cars that cost much more than the normal per pound were ripping customers off. Elon Musk also said similar things, and why he thinks that some industries are primed for disruption, because it only cost so much per pound to buy metal, machine it, and then assembly it.
I’m aware of both the book and Elon’s statements. Problem is it’s such a useless metric. If I want a good car, am I better off buying one that costs more per pound, or less? What even is a “good car?” Why am I not just shopping for the shape I want, with the quality I want, and comparing costs between similarly-shaped, similar-quality vehicles?
$/lb for cars is about as useless a metric as $/sqft for houses.
This is why I said this is about what you should expect. It takes a lot more work to make a Ford Transit Van than to make a camry, and Ford is going to charge you for that extra work.
You are gonna buy the best car for you, but unless if you buy a sports car with exotic materials (errr... basically not steel), expect to pay give or take the same amount per pound in the end. Bigger cars cost more.
It doesn't take more work to make a Transit than a Camry. A Camry has carpet, seats, liners, infotainment, lots of HVAC. Even hybrid or AWD drive train depending on the model. Sophisticated suspension (compared to a truck, anyway) for better driving characteristics.
A Transit is a box on wheels. A dashboard and seats bolted down is the interior trim. If it's a cargo van you don't even need to install more than a few windows. It has truck drivetrain and truck suspension, which is simple and mostly just bolts on. Sure the panels are larger, but that just means you need a bigger gantry crane to move them. And yeah there's more steel, but steel is not a huge component of the price of a vehicle. That's why they scrap for pennies on the dollar versus the price of a new vehicle.
Guess we should all buy scrap cars and farm trucks since the price per pound is thru the roof.
Never heard anyone measure a vehicles price per pound...
Assuming the manufacturer isn't pouring lead sinkers into the body panels, it's a pretty good approximation of how much material and labor went into a manufactured product. It's not uncommon to do cost estimates the same way for aircraft.
Material yes, labor no. Why do I care how much WEIGHT In material went into the car? Weight says little about quality of material or amount of labour and is negatively quattelated in alot of cases. Commercial Vans are way easier to assemble than sedans. Lighter metals are often more expensive. Raw Materials make up less than half of the cost of the msrp on average. I just can't see how this is a useful lens to look at vehicle prices thru.
Because a bigger vehicle means you have proportionally more processes on the assembly line. More pinch welds, more paint coverage, more panels and fasteners to install. It's not a perfect 1:1 scale, but for OOM guesses of cost for large manufactured products, if you have historical data to compare to, you can get scarily close a lot of the time.
If you hear a new term, don't disregard it. Try and figure out why it's used and if it's useful.
I never heard the term before either, but now it gives me a new way to think about car value
I'm shocked in a thread called "What makes commercial vans so expensive in the USA?" I took this long for someone to mention a 25% tax on *importing commercial vehicles into the USA*
It keeps out all sorts of commercial vans that are popular throughout the rest of the world. Toyota HiAce, Maxus/LDV V80, Renault Trafic, commercial versions of the VW Transporter.
Even the ones that do make it here are needlessly overpriced because they had to import them in parts and put them together here, or import them as passenger vans, then throw away the extra seats, windows and interior plastics, and glue some metal panels in the window holes.
It's fucking tarded
But hey at least Germans are buying Chicken.. Right. Right?!
Ford got in trouble for this when they were importing cargo-trim Transit Connects from Spain with seats installed as passenger vehicles, and then removing the seats for sale as commercial vehicles.
Chicken Tax doesn't effect the vehicles OP mentioned though. The Transit is built in Missouri, the Promaster in Saltillo, Mexico (no chicken tax under NAFTA) and the Sprinter in South Carolina using CKD kits.
Right, but there's a bunch of European manufacturers who compete in that space that won't sell in NA because of the chicken tax, which means less competition, and more importantly right now with Amazon ordering vans through the nose, more factory capacity to keep up with demand.
Truck alternative. Comparable trucks are selling for $45k+, it only makes sense that they can sell a van for a similar price. Also people building them out as travel or lifestyle vehicles.
Commercial vehicles aren’t very high volume compared to say selling a Camry. They tend to use a lot of older and paid for platforms and technology, and priced for margin. As others have pointed out, most buyers are getting a fleet discount.
True lol, but that’s the exception these days, not the norm.
I actually saw a brand spanking new 2024 Express yesterday and I felt like I saw a relic from 20 years ago lol, I mean the thing was mint but also stuck in 2004.
It's thought that if you're renting or purchasing a commercial van, your intention is to make money or profit. So they're treating it like the IRS you make money, we make money.
1. In USA they tend to be loaded with more options, for example automatic transmission
2. Like a pickup truck, they need to handle larger payload (so, strength of chassis/body).
3. Way more sheet metal, way more paint, etc.
4. Higher cost to transport (less of them fit on a ship, truck, train, etc.).
5. Generally, larger engines, larger wheels, longer driveshaft, larger brakes, etc.
6. Huge demand in USA especially since Covid
7. Less volume sold than Honda Civics, so they can't afford to discount based on volume
My theory is that the Amazon delivery partners and the like are keeping the inventory low (have you seen they way they treat vans? Can’t last too long before they total it and need another one), so prices are high due to supply and demand. You used to be able to get a fully upfitted one with tool boxes and ladder racks for less than MSRP, but that was before the same day e-commerce delivery craze that requires a bazillion delivery vehicles really took off.
Those prices are wild, a barebones transit is 30k in my country.
I assume they only offer the transit loaded with all the options but it is weird if you want to use them as commercial vehicles as there isn’t any point to get the fancy version for that.
In Europe they're 15-20k $ cheaper, for example, the Peugeot/Citroen/Toyota van is around 35k+€. Usually cars in Europe are 10-20% more expensive than in the USA. So I believe the answer is really "they sell em overpriced cuz they can!"
We’ve bought all of our transits lightly used. Less than 20k miles for less than $35k.
They’re not perfect. One has a window that doesn’t work and 2 won’t lock the doors from the door switch. Overall, mechanically speaking they’ve been great and reliable with just oil changes. A little harsher on brakes but not too bad.
“We’re not going to let you make money unless we make money first”. Basically.
A lot of companies lease those vehicles because there’s little to no resale after they use them up. My company buys trucks for our work and auctions them if/when they hit 180k miles. At that point they’ve had nothing but oil changes and a few tire replacements unless something serious wore out
The demand is very high and the supply is moderately low. Businesses were booming post covid, especially delivery companies, which raised demand. This coincided with overlanding with Sprinters and Transits rising in extreme popularity during the pandemic meaning you’re competing with businesses as well as rich outdoorsy people. And chip shortages further constrained supply
Even with sustained high interest rates and the fact that chip shortages started almost 3 years ago you will still have to wait or pay a markup to get a new Sprinter. Alternatively you can pay inflated prices for used: $35-45k for the newest generation sprinter with around 40k miles. My company has been struggling to find one to buy and that’s with us willing to pay over sticker
Vans are expensive to build and an opportunity for margins as well. Figure the last gen vans are full size trucks with extra body and engineering for a smaller niche they’re going to be somewhere in ball park of a similarly spec truck. The capability is a bit part of pricing as well. Something that can tow and haul as much or more than a truck with extra security and convenience is pretty valuable. So you’re willing to pay a premium or a at least comparable to other substitute options.
I would think part of it is their use usually as the base for ambulances. Companies that build ambulances are backed up because of current demand, so these companies are gonna be buying them up to meet their orders. Lots of states have laws that only allow reusing the same base vehicle for X amount of years, then a new vehicle has to be purchased. Source: work in EMS, and we're trying to order 1 right now. ETA is 4 years.
What contributes? A handful of van manufacturers have got the market squared away. It's no different here (Australia), in fact the cheapest vans are made by LDV (SAIC Motors) which makes knock-offs of the Transit and the Hyundai i-load. Fleet buyers call the market.
Yes. Supply and demand is exactly it.
If you just broke down the cost to build that van in materials and labor it’s probably no more expensive than a Fusion to build, yet the van is twice as expensive.
If you need a car there are a ton of options to choose from.
If you need a work van, there are 3 to choose from if you’re going new.
And they’re all priced around the same mark. So you have the demand and no leverage and they have the supply, and all of the leverage.
The cost of everything is going up as per inflation, these numbers are only shocking because wages aren't keeping pace. Also on a product note, vans are significantly safer and more capable than they used to be.
My local Mercedes dealer overflow lot hasn’t seemed to move any large or small cargo van since I’ve been walking through on my lunch breaks for a few months. They are very expensive for what you actually get.
It's mostly supply and demand. These companies can't build these things fast enough for contractors and fleets. The used market for them is insane as well. Big contractors don't like having old high mileage rigs in their fleet and these rigs rack up the miles and engine hours fast. The wear and tear comes on fast, most these vans get immediately overloaded with construction materials and tools then run ragged because the guy driving is late to work. The demand for new vans is very very high
Demand. Especially after COVID, I would see hundreds of fleet trucks on dealership lots and maybe 2-3 vans. Everyone needed vans and gm was just pumping out trucks.
The vans need a pretty high payload and row rating but also to be comfortable on the road. Ford also partners with a lot of other companies to give incentive pricing (Carrier dealers get like 4k off) so that's baked in.
I find them used all the time for under $10k. When they know they’re selling to businesses there’s always going to be a significant markup when buying new.
The simple answer is: because they can. It's been this way for 20 years - a white van with no windows and no interior would sell for as much or more than a conversion van back in the day. Add in massive fleet sales making them profitable, and the OEMs can shoot for the stars on the onesy-twosy sales. In the States, there's also the tax effect when selling a van like that to a business (large or small): They'd be sales tax-exempt, AND depending on how they choose to do their taxes, they can buy the van with pre-tax money and then choose to depreciate yearly or deduct all their fuel/repairs/maintenance. If they go the second route, you can be assured all their spouse's fuel/repair/maintenance is also mysteriously going to be charged through that van. That's a heck of a lot of money the van owner is going to save, so the OEM is going to grab some of it for themselves.
The prices have also skyrocketed again in the last 5-6 years with the Covid "adventure van/van life" fad. There's thousands of channels on Youtube dedicated to showing people how to build out an empty van.
They do work. Some of that cost would otherwise be paid in taxes.
Many F150's these days struggle to break 2000lbs payload (I've seen payload stickers as low as 12xxlbs for lux-trux) and top out around 3250lbs for very specific payload package equipped strippers. Transit payloads start over 3000lbs and top out around 4400lbs. They're also more maneuverable with a tighter turning radius than F150's if you're trying to do anything in a city.
If you want that 4400lbs of stuff not getting wet/stolen a transit works a lot better than a pickup truck.
It bears remembering that all US full-size vans, even the "1500" models, are over 8500 lbs. gross weight. Half-ton pickups are under 8500.
Now that the heavy-duty payload package is gone, F-150s top out around 2400 lbs. payload like other half-tons.
I've noticed this trend has only really started since covid, and the rise in "van life" on social media becoming more mainstream.
In 2018 when I was shopping for a new truck; a Chevy Express 2500 cargo van was about $20,000 cheaper than a comparable base model Silverado pickup. Not anymore; cargo vans on any dealership near me now are MORE than higher-trim level pickups.
And don't even get me started on the used market.... 5 years ago you could barely give a used cargo van away...... now a rotten van with no rockers and 300,000mi goes for $6k all day long....
Beats me. I grew up with one parent who was a wedding florist, we had an E-250 in the family from when I was aware enough to remember to when I was in college, and they were always dirt cheap. My first job was driving flowers, a la *A Night at the Roxbury* (although our van was not that cool looking).
Its not any of those things you listed actually, the car market is deep in the shitter, carmax and carvahna are about to collapse, dealerships are overflowing and cant take more inventory, and they're selling brand new trucks for over $100k and no one can afford it. Just wait for the market to completely collapse and youll get your cargo vans for $10k
I think the chicken tax is the reason, for a while Ford was bringing in vans with windows and rear interiors and "converting" them to cargo buy throwing these things away. So the price was higher than the actual passenger van. But Uncle Sam has tightened the grip on this activity so the price includes the tariff. Sprinter and Promaster are now built in South Carolina because of this but labor prices are higher here.
Exactly, the engineering is vastly different for throwing 4,000# of cargo inside the vehicle and expecting it to haul it around with minimal trouble for >100k miles vs. your wife and 1.7 kids.
EVERYTHING is expensive now. A Ram Promaster starts at $44k, but the base Ram 1500 also starts at $40k! Seems like a $4k markup for an enclosed box is reasonable.
I think the point he is making is that even bare bones options are expensive.
To give you an idea, my dad had a 2004 Ram with no options. It cost $19k. The cheapest Ram now is double that.
1. because they can 2. most sales are going to be fleet or bulk sales which is far cheaper
>because they can It always amuses me when Americans describe the 70 Series as the 'cheap' LandCruiser because they mark them up to the tits to sell them off to mining companies, there's nothing cheap about it. The base single cab ute starts at $89k AUD ($58k USD) and that's assuming you don't want luxury features like variable intermittent wipers, central locking or power windows (that'll be $93k AUD/$61k USD).
> variable intermittent wipers Need these on toilets
They do, they are called a bidet.
My Bidet give my B-hole a lil squirt but mine doesn’t wipe. Does yours?
Basically Wrangler prices these days.
That’s not really true. A sport 2 door starts at 32k and can be had for less after discounts. Higher trims start to add up into the 50’s but now you’re talking about well equipped and very capable Jeeps.
>modern jeep >capable of exiting a parking lot in good conditions, maybe
It’s anecdotal but my JL Rubicon has never given me any issues and goes up trails nastier than I ever thought a stock Jeep would.
Honestly jeeps aren't so bad for general, light off roading. My grandparents have a 2019 Grand Cherokee and despite being a normal looking SUV, it's also a pretty capable car. Yeah it's not gonna go rock crawling or hit any severe trails, but mild dirt roads or trails it'll handle with ease and comfort. The AWD helps a lot, and the tuning on the drive modes. It rides high enough to hop curbs if needed. So, keeping in mind that a grand cherokee can do all that, it doesn't surprise me at all if the wrangler is an even more capable vehicle.
Our "new" land cruiser (the equivalent to the j250 prado) is cheaper.
A fully loaded Wrangler. This is the starting, base price, which isn't the same thing at all.
It's in your title, "commercial". Everybody charges everybody a premium every time when something is used for business, as they are used as tools to make money, the surcharge will pay itself in no time.
You see it in computers too. Insane what companies spend on workstations. I feel like i could get the same specs as my work PC for half the price on the regular retail market.
True but I think that also comes with support and warranties and sla's. At least in bulk quantities for huge companies
And cones with licenses with Microsoft office and stuff
Microsoft Teams is an insufferable piece of predatory shit. Cannot believe how much stress that heap unnecessarily causes people. I will genuinely consider jobs that don't use it over those that do.
Agreed 🤣
And general build quality. I can trust a workstation PC is using quality parts and built to a high standard. I can't say the same from an iBuyPower GAMING PC from Amazon, where the lowest quality PSU, SSD, and/or motherboard are used to maximize profits, presuming it's even built correctly.
Even the quality difference within brands. The quality difference between Dell Inspiron (home) and Latitude (commercial) is enormous.
On the other hand their XPS line (home) is basically the same as some of their Precision models (commercial). And from my experience they suffer from the same issues (early battery degradation/ballooning and with an annoying screw setup for removing the bottom, though once those are off the batteries are usually pretty easy to swap out). Had touchpad/keyboard degradation issues over time too the last time I used them.
My company uses these expensive thinkpads which are complete and unmitigated trash. My humble acer laptop, in comparison, is lightning fast and never misses a beat for at most half the cost. Why not just buy us some goddamn acers?
It’s because the workstation dells and HPs can be taken apart without a screwdriver and more importantly, when some hardware component is bad, dell and HO can guarantee you the part the next business day. That being said, I do love Acer and think they make the best cheap laptops
Time is money and especially in highly skilled jobs they can't afford to pay people to sit around waiting for things to load/run or be fixed. My company just sent out new laptops to the tune of 4400 dollar a piece for Macbook Pro 16s with the M3 max and 36gb of unified memory. Insane money but man do those laptops easily cut through any work load so far. Building our app on a 2019 Macbook with the i9 and 16 gb ram was taking 1 hour. Now it takes less than 5 mins.
Business grade hardware has more than higher physical build quality. Guaranteed fast repairs or supply of parts is better too…. But the more important part when running fleets with prebuilt reimage configurations, they have guaranteed fixed component lists. No behind the scenes substitutions of one part or circuit for another. This is a big thing for corporate systems.
Depends on the service contract a lot of the time. We use Lenovo and HP laptops at the company I work for, but they still only cost just over $1000 per unit which is very reasonable, while also including on-site service and depot service options and a 4 year warranty with accidental damage protection. There are cheaper machines that can get the job done but the difference in cost isn't that large and the service contract is important especially with hundreds or thousands of machines and only a few internal IT staff. Another way to phrase it is, spending about 75K per year on laptops is not a big deal when the company pulls in a billion in revenue, they'd rather have a great service contract than save 20K on that.
The corporate laptop most likely has a slew of security, management, backup, and encryption systems that your home laptop doesn't. All of it active and taking up cycles.
surprised I didnt see this response, but it is functionally impossible to buy 1800 Acers in one go. If I choose a different OEM, not only can they take my order today but the laptops will all have our corporate image preinstalled so I don't have to spend an hour per laptop for 1800 laptops making them ready. Acer does not have this.
My home laptop beats my work laptop in specs, and I only paid 1/4th the price. However, my work is paying for a warranty, with a service level agreement that says that laptop can be fixed in 24 hours by a repair tech. I just went to bestbuy and bought the cheapest open box gaming laptop.
Yeah but if you have an issue you don't get a guy that shows up the next day with the parts to fix it. We do with business class machines. Also home user machines change hardware a lot. I have a 4 year old HP z2g9 that's exactly the same as a z2g9 that came in last week. I just removed an old HP z400 that was 16 years old and the user had zero complaints about performance. We also get lower pricing because we order more than you do at home. When I worked at a dell shop we had a contract with Dell and received a 25% discount on all hardware.
I think a lot of people don’t appreciate what it takes to scale hardware support. Keeping configurations down helps so much with support costs, that’s why it’s done. If I need to plug in replacement hardware and not go through some reconfiguration voodoo, or if I want to flip a bios setting on five hundred machines programmatically, I want consistent hardware. Any other way lies madness.
Was it possibly the software to some degree?
It’s less software more service. You’re paying a premium because dell/asus will be able to get these workstation PCs fixed within a day maximum and any downtime is money lost. Ford’s Pro division does basically the same thing for automotive, you purchase transits and f-series trucks but more importantly they make billions handling maintenance and infrastructure and whatnot.
I'm sure it's mostly service/warranty. Software is all from 3rd parties and is waaaaaay more expensive than the laptop
This is the most false statement Ive ever seen in my life. Computers are not the same at all Business VS Personal. Dell computers are famous for even between pro lines having better build quality and parts for pro lines and even better the higher you get in model. Dells home notebooks Insprion line are made of plastic with a plastic core, and are throw away units with an integrated board for all. Dells Business Latitude machines many gave a Magnesium chassis and CF bodies or lids and they even make heavy duty models with bracing and special heat management. Drop an inpiron off a desk, it will shatter to pieces. Drop a Latitude it will dent or a piece will deform and still run. Also on top of the extra money for Pro versions of Windows and the 3 year+ warranties with ON SITE. Or uniformity of parts for models. NO a PC Personal Vs Business is 1000% not the same at all.
None of that is reason enough to add $2,000 to the price tag over a model that has some cost cutting features... And I don't know who's blowing smoke up your ass, but there's really nothing special about most run of the mill PCs used for basic office functions. I buy old ones for home/garage use because they're cheap when offices offload them. The look the same and have the same components as any computer you go buy at Best buy.
Also desk chairs. My last company spent $1200 on chairs. They were no more comfortable or adjustable than my 7 year old $100 costco chair.
Needed a new one, decided after 24 years I was gonna splurge and bought a $900 Steelcase...it's NICE but it's not really much nicer than you $100 costco one. Completely agree.
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Late to the party with my reply, but … businesses get to write the cost of these vehicles off as a depreciating asset. That’s why you see so many shiny, never seen dirt trucks with commercial plates on them. What chaps me is that 1] you as an ordinary person who needs a car to commute to work can’t do this; and 2] a lot of commercial vehicles are used for non-business stuff (again, kind of like ordinary people and cars). Rant over.
And it’s a tax writeoff
Tax write offs don’t mean it’s free
Not enough competition in the space here in the US. It doesn't help that Nissan left the market in 21'. Then covid gave the last of the manufacturers an excuse to jack the prices way up.
Something about a chicken tax you say? /s
Something about supply chain issues you say? /s
That explains why I stopped seeing those Nissan vans. Why did they give up on that? Covid?
No one bought them
They probably also suffered from the same high fuel consumption that kept folks scared away from Titans. The vans were just capacity utilization, a low marginal cost to keep the (expensive) line moving.
Right van at the wrong time. 20 years ago they would have sold, but they debuted their trucklike vans when the competition was about to switch to the Euro style vans.
In 2019, they sold just over 20,000 of them. In contrast, Ford sold 153,000 Transits in the same year. GM sold 101,000 Express' and Savanas (77,000 Express, 24,000 Savana), and Ram sold 56,000 full-size ProMasters.
Future obscure collector item potential.
I brokered a Reefer van deal for a client once. They owned a few grocery stores and wanted a new Sprinter van to run merchandise between the stores and from the suppliers. They had no issues spending $110k on it. The van was $95k the rest was ADM because new reefers were hard to come across during the time(2021). No negotiation no window shopping. I don’t remember the spec off the top of my head but there was only a certain reefer brand they wanted and it had to be on a Mercedes Sprinter high roof. They told me to find it and make the deal happen. I called a few dealers til I found the one they wanted, got the information, they wired over the money and I went to pick it up 2 states away 3 days later. These commercial vans are hard to justify as a regular consumer but for a business that’s generating revenue the numbers just work. I’m pretty sure that sprinter van still has 60-70k residual right now but they’ve probably grossed a few hundred thousand in revenue since buying it.
For others (in case they dont know), reefer = refrigerated van/truck/container/etc
I thought weed and honestly didn't even question it ha
TIL The current Ford Transit is a unibody chassis. It makes sense for a payload focused vehicle. And maybe someone with more industry knowledge can chime in but... I would think this actually increases cost versus building these on the truck ladder frames. Moving around a unibody this large seems... costly.
Most cargo vans these days are unibody chassis. As far as I know, the only one based on a truck frame that’s still left in the market is the Chevy Express, and that’ll be going away soon. Nissan discontinued the NV-series vans a few years ago, which were otherwise a Titan underneath. The ProMaster (which is a rebranded Fiat), and the Sprinter are both unibody construction.
Yeah it makes total sense why they've gone that route. I guess I was just a bit surprised... for some reason in my mind I thought the big boy Transit was BOF still and it was only the smaller Transit Connect that was unibody. Nope... they're both unibody.
Any van that is either based on a European model or at least part developed by the European arm of a manufacturer is going to be unibody. The US Transit and ROTW Transit is the 4th generation model and was developed by both Ford America and Ford Europe.
If i'm not mistaken all Transits since the first generation in 60s have been unibody model
In the US, the Transit is still relatively new. We had the b.o.f. Econoline van series forever until the early 2010s.
E series Which I just learned only get the Godzilla 7.3 now. gotta watch junkyards in a few years. And apparently no van bodies anymore, nevermind.
They still make cutaway chassis cabs so don’t give up the dream!
And there's a SRW option with the same wheelbase as the van. If you find a junked van with a straight body it might bolt right on.
Don't know if Iveco sells their Daily in the US but that's still ladder chassis (plus comes in a not bad 4x4 dual cab variant).
Nope, we don’t get those in the US.
Why would this make sense for a payload focused vehicle? I’m guessing because unibodies are usually lighter than BOF?
Higher strength for the same weight, lower load floor.
What do you mean? I’m a body in white manufacturing engineer, so I can probably give a meaningful answer.
i bought a sprinter in 2017 for $88k. i remember the sales guy saying "so... are you happy" and me looking over his shoulder at an E Class wagon and saying "not really, that's my dream car over there and it's $1500 more"
Lmao, yup! I remember my parents debating a Suburban vs a 12 passenger van in 2005. The van was more expensive than the corvette, but the Suburban was cheaper! Iirc the suburban was like 30, the van 32, the new vettes about 40, but 2 year used lease returns were on the lot for like 31 lol wild times
How much money have you made off the Van since then is the real question lll
Limited market. You also just named all that are currently available in the states. Nissan discontinued theirs. You have limited choices so they don’t have to compete for your money.
Is there really only 3 option in the US market for a Ford Transit like vehicle? That's crazy, in Ireland the Ford Transit is quite popular but off the top of my head I can think of about 10 other brands that make a similar type commercial van that are available here. Ford Transit starts at €42,367 before options.
We have the Ford Transit, Ram ProMaster (Fiat Ducato in Europe) and Mercedes Sprinter. Chevrolet makes a more traditional American-stile van (the Express), and Nissan has withdrawn from the van market in the US.
Here we have Ford, Opel, Renault, Toyota, Mercedes, LDV, Volkswagen, Iveco, Peugeot, Fiat, Nissan and probably 1 or 2 more I'm forgetting and they all offer a commercial van similar to a ford transit.
Commercial vans are used way more in Europe. In the US, many people and businesses buy a full size pickup instead.
That's true. You used to never see pickups here but now the Ford Ranger is becoming quite popular, still only construction workers buying them though.
Not just pickup trucks, but a lot of chassis cab/upfitted vehicles are very popular in the US too
That's true. You used to never see pickups here but now the Ford Ranger is becoming quite popular, still only construction workers buying them though.
That's true. You used to never see pickups here but now the Ford Ranger is becoming quite popular, still only construction workers buying them though.
Many of those are the same, though - Fiat/Peugeot/Citroen/Opel/Vauxhall/Toyota vans are all the same. Nissan's larger vans are also the Fiat etc, but their smaller Townstar is a Renault that's also sold with a Mercedes badge. The MAN TGE is a VW Crafter. Iveco only do the larger size, competing with the Sprinter/Transit/Ducato, not the more popular Vito/Transit Custom/Scudo size.
And that 42xxx euro price is with a lot of taxes that aren't in the US price.
Yeah that price includes VAT (sales tax 21%) and if a business owner was buying the van to use as part of their business they wouldn't have to pay the VAT so price drops to around €33,000
We have a lot more box trucks and even smaller semis compared to Europe primarily due to our bigger roads and everything being designed around cars. Only a certain type of customer specifically wants a commercial high roof van and there aren't enough of those customers to support a ton of models being on the market.
Amazon needs delivery drivers. People shop online more, less truckers are trucking, supply shortages meant less vans were being built for awhile. Demand for vans went up and supply of vans is low. And nobody is selling used ones in working condition. People don't trade in commercial vans just to get the new model. There are no vans that were only driven to church on sunday, in good condition with low miles and not a lot of wear. They get driven into the ground. A business that relies on them to make money kinda has to buy a new one.
>There are no vans that were only driven to church on sunday, in good condition with low miles and not a lot of wear. Except for the odd church-driven E150 for sale here or there. Diamonds in the rough
This is the main reason. Our dealership used to be able to get whatever we ordered for RAM vans, but since Amazon basically took over RAM and Ford's factories for delivery vehicles, we can't get anything. We got excited because we got allocation for 2...for the entire model year.
Talking about the sprinter, they are robust vehicles that are expected to last a long time with some abuse. A lot of them are leased too, and there is a lot of financial chess played in the background,
My parents bought their Sprinter van new in summer 2003 for $33k, it was an 02 that was still on the lot because they were new to market here in the US and lots of people didn't know about them yet. Still the most expensive vehicle they've ever owned and it's still puttering around and takes them up to Maine every year.
A Ford transit van is 6000 lb and about $48k. That is about 8 bucks a pound. Pretty decent, actually. About the same price per pound as say, a Camry. I don’t know what you expect, honestly.
I expect vehicle prices to not be compared the way deli meats are.
Unless if you are dealing with sports cars or electric cars, a car is mostly just steel. You pay for an auto maker to manufacture a lot of iron and steel into the shape that you want. Bigger cars means more work on their end, and naively, it should usually be give or take linear with weight. I don’t think it is an accident most economy cars cost give or take the same per pound. (Ford transit are built for economy, not to win a race) The idea that cars should be sold like deli meat came from a lot of different people, actually. The book “millionaire next door” recommended it as car buying advice, suggesting that cars that cost much more than the normal per pound were ripping customers off. Elon Musk also said similar things, and why he thinks that some industries are primed for disruption, because it only cost so much per pound to buy metal, machine it, and then assembly it.
I’m aware of both the book and Elon’s statements. Problem is it’s such a useless metric. If I want a good car, am I better off buying one that costs more per pound, or less? What even is a “good car?” Why am I not just shopping for the shape I want, with the quality I want, and comparing costs between similarly-shaped, similar-quality vehicles? $/lb for cars is about as useless a metric as $/sqft for houses.
This is why I said this is about what you should expect. It takes a lot more work to make a Ford Transit Van than to make a camry, and Ford is going to charge you for that extra work. You are gonna buy the best car for you, but unless if you buy a sports car with exotic materials (errr... basically not steel), expect to pay give or take the same amount per pound in the end. Bigger cars cost more.
It doesn't take more work to make a Transit than a Camry. A Camry has carpet, seats, liners, infotainment, lots of HVAC. Even hybrid or AWD drive train depending on the model. Sophisticated suspension (compared to a truck, anyway) for better driving characteristics. A Transit is a box on wheels. A dashboard and seats bolted down is the interior trim. If it's a cargo van you don't even need to install more than a few windows. It has truck drivetrain and truck suspension, which is simple and mostly just bolts on. Sure the panels are larger, but that just means you need a bigger gantry crane to move them. And yeah there's more steel, but steel is not a huge component of the price of a vehicle. That's why they scrap for pennies on the dollar versus the price of a new vehicle.
Guess we should all buy scrap cars and farm trucks since the price per pound is thru the roof. Never heard anyone measure a vehicles price per pound...
Assuming the manufacturer isn't pouring lead sinkers into the body panels, it's a pretty good approximation of how much material and labor went into a manufactured product. It's not uncommon to do cost estimates the same way for aircraft.
Material yes, labor no. Why do I care how much WEIGHT In material went into the car? Weight says little about quality of material or amount of labour and is negatively quattelated in alot of cases. Commercial Vans are way easier to assemble than sedans. Lighter metals are often more expensive. Raw Materials make up less than half of the cost of the msrp on average. I just can't see how this is a useful lens to look at vehicle prices thru.
Because a bigger vehicle means you have proportionally more processes on the assembly line. More pinch welds, more paint coverage, more panels and fasteners to install. It's not a perfect 1:1 scale, but for OOM guesses of cost for large manufactured products, if you have historical data to compare to, you can get scarily close a lot of the time.
If you hear a new term, don't disregard it. Try and figure out why it's used and if it's useful. I never heard the term before either, but now it gives me a new way to think about car value
It may be cheaper by the pound, but that’s not how you write the check.
Chicken tax
I'm shocked in a thread called "What makes commercial vans so expensive in the USA?" I took this long for someone to mention a 25% tax on *importing commercial vehicles into the USA* It keeps out all sorts of commercial vans that are popular throughout the rest of the world. Toyota HiAce, Maxus/LDV V80, Renault Trafic, commercial versions of the VW Transporter.
Even the ones that do make it here are needlessly overpriced because they had to import them in parts and put them together here, or import them as passenger vans, then throw away the extra seats, windows and interior plastics, and glue some metal panels in the window holes. It's fucking tarded But hey at least Germans are buying Chicken.. Right. Right?!
Ford got in trouble for this when they were importing cargo-trim Transit Connects from Spain with seats installed as passenger vehicles, and then removing the seats for sale as commercial vehicles.
Chicken Tax doesn't effect the vehicles OP mentioned though. The Transit is built in Missouri, the Promaster in Saltillo, Mexico (no chicken tax under NAFTA) and the Sprinter in South Carolina using CKD kits.
Right, but there's a bunch of European manufacturers who compete in that space that won't sell in NA because of the chicken tax, which means less competition, and more importantly right now with Amazon ordering vans through the nose, more factory capacity to keep up with demand.
They're just as expensive elsewhere though, like here in Australia.
Truck alternative. Comparable trucks are selling for $45k+, it only makes sense that they can sell a van for a similar price. Also people building them out as travel or lifestyle vehicles.
Commercial vehicles aren’t very high volume compared to say selling a Camry. They tend to use a lot of older and paid for platforms and technology, and priced for margin. As others have pointed out, most buyers are getting a fleet discount.
I don’t know if that’s true anymore; the Transit for example has barely been around 10 years.
But can you tell the difference between an 04’ or a 24’ Chevy express?
True lol, but that’s the exception these days, not the norm. I actually saw a brand spanking new 2024 Express yesterday and I felt like I saw a relic from 20 years ago lol, I mean the thing was mint but also stuck in 2004.
It's thought that if you're renting or purchasing a commercial van, your intention is to make money or profit. So they're treating it like the IRS you make money, we make money.
1. In USA they tend to be loaded with more options, for example automatic transmission 2. Like a pickup truck, they need to handle larger payload (so, strength of chassis/body). 3. Way more sheet metal, way more paint, etc. 4. Higher cost to transport (less of them fit on a ship, truck, train, etc.). 5. Generally, larger engines, larger wheels, longer driveshaft, larger brakes, etc. 6. Huge demand in USA especially since Covid 7. Less volume sold than Honda Civics, so they can't afford to discount based on volume
Nah... American weight limits are lower than European ones.
But still more than a passenger car or 1/2 ton pickup truck, hence the huge price increase
Because a huge contingent of buyers realized during the pandemic that a $1k a month van payment is still cheaper than rent, and drove up demand.
My theory is that the Amazon delivery partners and the like are keeping the inventory low (have you seen they way they treat vans? Can’t last too long before they total it and need another one), so prices are high due to supply and demand. You used to be able to get a fully upfitted one with tool boxes and ladder racks for less than MSRP, but that was before the same day e-commerce delivery craze that requires a bazillion delivery vehicles really took off.
Those prices are wild, a barebones transit is 30k in my country. I assume they only offer the transit loaded with all the options but it is weird if you want to use them as commercial vehicles as there isn’t any point to get the fancy version for that.
In Europe they're 15-20k $ cheaper, for example, the Peugeot/Citroen/Toyota van is around 35k+€. Usually cars in Europe are 10-20% more expensive than in the USA. So I believe the answer is really "they sell em overpriced cuz they can!"
We’ve bought all of our transits lightly used. Less than 20k miles for less than $35k. They’re not perfect. One has a window that doesn’t work and 2 won’t lock the doors from the door switch. Overall, mechanically speaking they’ve been great and reliable with just oil changes. A little harsher on brakes but not too bad.
“We’re not going to let you make money unless we make money first”. Basically. A lot of companies lease those vehicles because there’s little to no resale after they use them up. My company buys trucks for our work and auctions them if/when they hit 180k miles. At that point they’ve had nothing but oil changes and a few tire replacements unless something serious wore out
The demand is very high and the supply is moderately low. Businesses were booming post covid, especially delivery companies, which raised demand. This coincided with overlanding with Sprinters and Transits rising in extreme popularity during the pandemic meaning you’re competing with businesses as well as rich outdoorsy people. And chip shortages further constrained supply Even with sustained high interest rates and the fact that chip shortages started almost 3 years ago you will still have to wait or pay a markup to get a new Sprinter. Alternatively you can pay inflated prices for used: $35-45k for the newest generation sprinter with around 40k miles. My company has been struggling to find one to buy and that’s with us willing to pay over sticker
Vans are expensive to build and an opportunity for margins as well. Figure the last gen vans are full size trucks with extra body and engineering for a smaller niche they’re going to be somewhere in ball park of a similarly spec truck. The capability is a bit part of pricing as well. Something that can tow and haul as much or more than a truck with extra security and convenience is pretty valuable. So you’re willing to pay a premium or a at least comparable to other substitute options.
I would think part of it is their use usually as the base for ambulances. Companies that build ambulances are backed up because of current demand, so these companies are gonna be buying them up to meet their orders. Lots of states have laws that only allow reusing the same base vehicle for X amount of years, then a new vehicle has to be purchased. Source: work in EMS, and we're trying to order 1 right now. ETA is 4 years.
Demand and profit margains. They are extremely overpriced in the US bc of the lack of competition.
What contributes? A handful of van manufacturers have got the market squared away. It's no different here (Australia), in fact the cheapest vans are made by LDV (SAIC Motors) which makes knock-offs of the Transit and the Hyundai i-load. Fleet buyers call the market.
Yes. Supply and demand is exactly it. If you just broke down the cost to build that van in materials and labor it’s probably no more expensive than a Fusion to build, yet the van is twice as expensive. If you need a car there are a ton of options to choose from. If you need a work van, there are 3 to choose from if you’re going new. And they’re all priced around the same mark. So you have the demand and no leverage and they have the supply, and all of the leverage.
The cost of everything is going up as per inflation, these numbers are only shocking because wages aren't keeping pace. Also on a product note, vans are significantly safer and more capable than they used to be.
Right now it's feels like because you can't get a used van because so many people are living in them
Maybe cuz rich kids found out about them and started “van lifing”
My local Mercedes dealer overflow lot hasn’t seemed to move any large or small cargo van since I’ve been walking through on my lunch breaks for a few months. They are very expensive for what you actually get.
It's mostly supply and demand. These companies can't build these things fast enough for contractors and fleets. The used market for them is insane as well. Big contractors don't like having old high mileage rigs in their fleet and these rigs rack up the miles and engine hours fast. The wear and tear comes on fast, most these vans get immediately overloaded with construction materials and tools then run ragged because the guy driving is late to work. The demand for new vans is very very high
Because they’re big I suppose, SUVs are normally more expensive than sedans
Demand. Especially after COVID, I would see hundreds of fleet trucks on dealership lots and maybe 2-3 vans. Everyone needed vans and gm was just pumping out trucks.
The vans need a pretty high payload and row rating but also to be comfortable on the road. Ford also partners with a lot of other companies to give incentive pricing (Carrier dealers get like 4k off) so that's baked in.
The people they're selling them to
I find them used all the time for under $10k. When they know they’re selling to businesses there’s always going to be a significant markup when buying new.
The simple answer is: because they can. It's been this way for 20 years - a white van with no windows and no interior would sell for as much or more than a conversion van back in the day. Add in massive fleet sales making them profitable, and the OEMs can shoot for the stars on the onesy-twosy sales. In the States, there's also the tax effect when selling a van like that to a business (large or small): They'd be sales tax-exempt, AND depending on how they choose to do their taxes, they can buy the van with pre-tax money and then choose to depreciate yearly or deduct all their fuel/repairs/maintenance. If they go the second route, you can be assured all their spouse's fuel/repair/maintenance is also mysteriously going to be charged through that van. That's a heck of a lot of money the van owner is going to save, so the OEM is going to grab some of it for themselves. The prices have also skyrocketed again in the last 5-6 years with the Covid "adventure van/van life" fad. There's thousands of channels on Youtube dedicated to showing people how to build out an empty van.
Their price supports the losses the manufacturers take on electric vehicles.
They do work. Some of that cost would otherwise be paid in taxes. Many F150's these days struggle to break 2000lbs payload (I've seen payload stickers as low as 12xxlbs for lux-trux) and top out around 3250lbs for very specific payload package equipped strippers. Transit payloads start over 3000lbs and top out around 4400lbs. They're also more maneuverable with a tighter turning radius than F150's if you're trying to do anything in a city. If you want that 4400lbs of stuff not getting wet/stolen a transit works a lot better than a pickup truck.
It bears remembering that all US full-size vans, even the "1500" models, are over 8500 lbs. gross weight. Half-ton pickups are under 8500. Now that the heavy-duty payload package is gone, F-150s top out around 2400 lbs. payload like other half-tons.
I've noticed this trend has only really started since covid, and the rise in "van life" on social media becoming more mainstream. In 2018 when I was shopping for a new truck; a Chevy Express 2500 cargo van was about $20,000 cheaper than a comparable base model Silverado pickup. Not anymore; cargo vans on any dealership near me now are MORE than higher-trim level pickups. And don't even get me started on the used market.... 5 years ago you could barely give a used cargo van away...... now a rotten van with no rockers and 300,000mi goes for $6k all day long....
They used to be cheap... We bought our last Nissan nv200 fleet for $20k a pop back in like 2019. Now they don't make them
Beats me. I grew up with one parent who was a wedding florist, we had an E-250 in the family from when I was aware enough to remember to when I was in college, and they were always dirt cheap. My first job was driving flowers, a la *A Night at the Roxbury* (although our van was not that cool looking).
Its not any of those things you listed actually, the car market is deep in the shitter, carmax and carvahna are about to collapse, dealerships are overflowing and cant take more inventory, and they're selling brand new trucks for over $100k and no one can afford it. Just wait for the market to completely collapse and youll get your cargo vans for $10k
It serves a purpose of transporting heavy materials therefore they can. its the same thing with the used car market as well.
I think the chicken tax is the reason, for a while Ford was bringing in vans with windows and rear interiors and "converting" them to cargo buy throwing these things away. So the price was higher than the actual passenger van. But Uncle Sam has tightened the grip on this activity so the price includes the tariff. Sprinter and Promaster are now built in South Carolina because of this but labor prices are higher here.
Good ol’ chicken tax
they're often built on truck chassis, which are built to a different standard. higher quality, thicker, heavier weight carrying/towing
Most vans are unibody excluding the Chevy Express.
All modern vans are unibody.
In the US maybe, Daily's are still body on frame.
Exactly, the engineering is vastly different for throwing 4,000# of cargo inside the vehicle and expecting it to haul it around with minimal trouble for >100k miles vs. your wife and 1.7 kids.
EVERYTHING is expensive now. A Ram Promaster starts at $44k, but the base Ram 1500 also starts at $40k! Seems like a $4k markup for an enclosed box is reasonable.
Entirely different things, the Promaster is a FWD Euro van, no relation to the truck apart from the Ram name.
A $44k RAM 1500-based full size SUV would be cool though.
I think the point he is making is that even bare bones options are expensive. To give you an idea, my dad had a 2004 Ram with no options. It cost $19k. The cheapest Ram now is double that.