LAS VEGAS — Faced with inflation, high interest rates and steep new-vehicle pricing, U.S. consumers are continuing to hang on to their old vehicles longer, pushing the average passenger/light truck vehicle age to a record 12.5 years.
The average age for passenger cars has reached 13.6 years, and the average light truck age has hit 11.8 years, according to S&P Global Mobility.
This is good news for the aftermarket repair industry, Todd Campau, associate director of aftermarket solutions, S&P Global, told AAPEX 2023 attendees in Las Vegas in November.
He said the average age likely will continue to climb at least through 2025 due to constrained new vehicle sales, which are predicted to hit 15.5 million for the year.
The number of vehicles on U.S. roads also is growing. At the start of the year, vehicles in operation (VIO) was 284 million, and by July it had grown to 285 million.
"That is very good news that it has been growing. At the start of the pandemic, we were a little concerned that we might see a little bit of a pullback in VIO, and we did see a pullback for 2021. But the past few years, it has been growing, not rapidly, but it has been growing this year and continues to grow," he said.
"Average age typically does stay pretty consistent or climbs very slightly. The past few years, it's been climbing pretty rapidly, and it's continuing to look like it's going to climb pretty rapidly for a couple more years as we see new vehicle sales slowly start to come back to normal," he said.
"All that means is more repairs coming to our bays, more tires that need to be replaced, more brake jobs, more oil changes and everything. So good news in general for the aftermarket," Campau said.
Vehicle miles traveled is another metric that impacts the vehicle service market as it affects vehicle parts replacement. This year, drivers are expected to clock about 3.5 trillion miles, rebounding from the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.
"Typically, historically, when it comes to vehicle miles traveled, when we start to hit a period of economic uncertainty, high inflation, high interest rates, where the cost of goods and services are higher, we typically see people pull back on vehicle miles traveled," Campau said. "And we're really still not seeing that, at least not to a significant level. So I think overall that's very good news."