why are new trucks so expensive?

Materials input put costs
Technology
Customer demands
Financing options

Customers are needing/wanting more and more capability from trucks. People want to tow 10,000 lbs in a half ton, going uphill at 20% grade, in 110 F weather, at 80 mph, for 300,000 miles, and get 29 mpg.

Technology demands from customers are increasing although I think the OEMs are driving this a bit as well. OEMs are configuring tech packages that are speculative in that if they have feature x, and other oems have feature y, they will attract more customers. Then other oems copy each other for the same features. Of course this creates a technology 'arms race' where you end up with features like start/stop that is universally detested.

The result is highly complex tech packages that have barely any testing and it is packaged in cars prematurely. The effect is that the tech packages are super expensive driving cost up. The oems think its worth the risk because it will drive sales.

Lastly, you can afford the capability and tech if you can finance for 84 months at 2% interest.

There are alot of people who won't keep a modern HD truck past warranty period because of the risk they are incurring of a huge expensive repair. So they bounce to the next model. OEMs think this is a demand for their product because many customers are getting new vehicles every 3-6 years but its actually a risk avoidance tactic.

 

Because the manufactures can thats why.People will pay whatever it is to drive whatever. 80-90-100k pick ups all over the place as daily drivers,insane. but people keep forking over the money ,so onwards and upwards the prices are going.