While it appears dealers are having trouble fulfilling one specific segment on their inventory shopping lists, Black Book’s latest price update indicated dealers aren’t paying quite as much when they do find the units they want.

The newest Black Book Market Insights report showed an increase in wholesale vehicle depreciation, especially in the car segments. Although cars had a higher depreciation percentage overall, editors noticed the compact van category for trucks saw the highest depreciation out of all vehicle categories with a 1.74 percent decline in value.

“The wholesale vehicle market experienced broad declines last week across most vehicle segments,” said Anil Goyal, Black Book’s senior vice president of automotive valuation and analytics, one of the many experts set to be a part of this year’s Used Car Week, which runs from Nov. 13 through 17 in Palm Springs, Calif.

According to volume-weighted data, editors determined overall car segment values decreased by 0.58 percent last week, higher than the average weekly decrease of 0.43 percent in values spotted during the previous four weeks.

Black Book found that the prestige luxury car, sporty car and sub-compact car segments declined the most by 1.03 percent, 0.89 percent and 0.78 percent, respectively.

Again considering volume-weighted information, editors reported that overall truck segment values — including pickups, SUVs and vans — softened by 0.40 percent last week; a figure more than than the average weekly decrease of 0.28 percent in values registered in the previous four weeks.

As previously noted, compact vans declined the most at 1.74 percent, while the small pickup segment wasn’t far off with a drop of 1.46 percent.

So now that we know the movements associated with what dealers are paying, what about what they’re seeing coming down the lanes and how they want to stock their lots? The anecdotes Black Book’s representatives at the auctions provided gave a pretty clear picture of what’s happening nowadays.

Starting in Tennessee, Black Book’s observer said, “Used-vehicle retail remains OK, but dealers are struggling to get nice trades. They are all in need of quality used pickup trucks, which are especially difficult to find.”

Down in Florida, the truck story continued with the lane watcher saying, “We had a good auction this week. There were more no-sales on trucks as consignors were holding out for ‘home run’ money due to the low supply.”

While not specifically mentioning trucks, Black Book’s personnel stationed in Colorado reported, “Inventory is low at the auctions so, in turn, the conversion percentages are good.”

Continuing out West, the story in California was, “The no-sales here were mostly due to over-valued higher mileage units.”

Wrapping up in Michigan, lane observers heard from dealers about another segment in the sales calendar as the recap indicated, “We are starting to see the annual back-to-school activity in the lower-priced units. This typically lasts for three or four weeks here.”