Truck Tariffs: What They Mean for Your Fleet Replacement Plan

Truck tariffs are adding thousands of dollars to what your fleet pays for a new heavy truck, and that shifts when replacement makes sense. The main driver is a 25% US Section 232 tariff on medium- and heavy-duty trucks imported into the United States, in effect since November 1, 2025. For trucks that qualify under the USMCA (CUSMA in Canada), it applies only to the value of their non-US content. It reaches much of the market because Mexico is the largest exporter of medium- and heavy-duty trucks to the US. It is a US import duty, so it applies to trucks entering the United States.

Per-truck estimates vary by source. In February 2025, when tariffs on Mexican imports were first announced, the American Trucking Associations warned that a 25% tariff could raise the price of a new tractor by as much as $35,000. What a given truck actually costs depends on where it was built and how much of its content is US-made, so ask the dealer to show the tariff on the quote.

A Fleet Advantage benchmark survey presented to more than 2,500 fleet executives found 45% undecided on procurement, so a large share of the industry is waiting instead of committing to buy or to defer. You can see the result in the age of trucks on the road: 55% of the organizations surveyed now run trucks for more than five years.

Older trucks carry their own costs. In the same survey, 45% of respondents said older trucks are moderately or significantly hurting their fleet's safety performance. When you delay replacement, the cost shows up in maintenance bills and in the fleet's safety record.

Tariffs change the math on when to replace a truck, but the underlying tradeoff stays. An aging truck still costs more to maintain, still trails a new one on safety and fuel efficiency, and still needs replacing at some point, whatever a new one costs today. The tariff moves the breakeven point on that tradeoff and leaves the tradeoff itself in place.

A decision like that calls for data over a gut call. Engine-hour and maintenance-cost data from your existing telematics platform shows which vehicles cost the most to keep running. A fleet that stretches its replacement cycle overall can then choose which units to replace first, instead of replacing everything on the old schedule or freezing every replacement at once.

A fleet stretching its replacement cycle still replaces some trucks, and the platform's data ranks them. For each unit, pull four numbers for the last twelve months: maintenance cost per kilometre, days out of service, fault-code frequency, and fuel economy against the fleet average for the same duty. Add safety events per hundred kilometres, since fleets report that older trucks hurt safety performance. Sort by maintenance cost per kilometre first. The top few units usually stand out, and days out of service confirm them. Those trucks pay back their replacement fastest even at a tariff-inflated price, while units further down the list can safely stay another year. Review the ranking each quarter, not once a year, so you catch the unit whose costs jump. High Point GPS builds this report for fleets across Canada and the United States from the data their GPS tracking devices already collect.