Kelley Blue Book shows new truck incentives poor post-COVID

A recent report from Kelley Blue Book has revealed new truck incentives are poor post-COVID and it doesn’t look like it is going to get better.

New truck incentives

For years, incentives aka cash on the hood, sold a lot of trucks. No matter what automakers did with new trucks for gadgets and gizmos, if they gave thousands of dollars off, trucks would sell.

Consumers largely didn’t care about new powertrains or technology, they just wanted a newer truck with a good deal. It was just the way things were back then.

The latest June 2025 market insights report from Kelley Blue Book tried to give some relief for consumers with “discounts last month increased modestly, climbing to 6.9% of ATP, higher by 0.1 percentage points from May.” This was up from 6.5% from the previous year.

Great news for consumers! Well, until you look at the chart that overlays incentives on top of the average transaction price of new vehicles. (insert sad trombone)

It used to be if you were buying a $50,000 truck, you wouldn’t actually buy a $50,000 truck. You’d get at least $5-10k off the price as part of the deal. Some people even got more than that off the price of the truck. It wasn’t that uncommon.

Now if you find a dealer willing to do that, it is considered a rarity and you wonder how they are staying in business. This was the case when we bought our 2025 Ram 1500 RHO and got over $10k off.

Our take

COVID changed a lot of things, some good, some not. Before then, you’d never pay the actual asking price for a new truck and now you are fighting some dealers to not pay a mark-up for a new vehicle. Because if you don’t pay the mark-up, the next consumer most likely will.

Will we ever return to massive amounts of cash on the hood? Most likely not.