The higher the resale value, in other words, the more people want the vehicle used and the more the original owner can expect to get.
This directly affects people who buy their vehicles in the traditional sense, by the way, rather than people who lease. Resale values can play a role in lease payments, but not as directly.
So if you have a four-year-old pickup truck that cost you $20,000 new four years ago and it has a 50 percent resale value, you can expect to get $10,000 for it when you sell it. A 40 percent resale value would likely get you $8,000, and a 60 percent resale value would get you $12,000.
As you might expect, all vehicles are not created equal when it comes to resale value. A study by Desrosiers Automotive Consultants of the relative resale values of the light trucks sold by 16 Canadian car companies makes this perfectly clear.
Light trucks covers a lot of ground here, including full-size pickups, compact pickups, SUVs and minivans. So there are likely to be differences from segment to segment with all companies and even within each company.
And things change in the car business, so the study of the current resale values of the light trucks bought new four years ago might not reflect the likely future value of the light trucks sold today.