Used Car Dealers

The median filer grossed $20,176, or $1,681 a month before expenses. That is an operating business at part-time scale: enough revenue to be worth running properly, not enough to be the only thing in the household.

126,564 people filed under this code. A field that large has a settled price, a settled set of expectations, and no shortage of people willing to meet both.

28,097 filers, 22.2% of the total, took $100,000 or more in receipts. Read the size of that group as evidence about turnover in Used Car Dealers rather than about income: the costs scale with it.

Independent motor vehicle and parts selling suits people who understand that the margin is made when the unit is bought, and who can hold stock without it becoming the whole business.

There is no training requirement to file under this code — which is precisely why so many people appear in the bottom bands. Entry being free is not the same as the work being viable.

The top quarter of Used Car Dealers earns 15.3x the bottom quarter — under $5,566 against over $85,101, a spread of $79,535. Distributions this stretched are usually two different jobs sharing one label, and any average across them means little.

The bottom quarter of Used Car Dealers earns under $5,566 — $44,454 below the $50,020 a typical American job pays. Entering at the bottom and waiting is a live risk here, not a theoretical one, and some people never leave that quarter.

Do not start this with floor plan debt you cannot service through a slow quarter.

46,208 filers out of 126,564 — 36.5% — reported under $10,000 in gross receipts in 2022. At that share the bottom band is not a warning about beginners; it is a description of a large part of the field.

Read that as a floor, not an estimate. Census publishes gross receipts, not net income, so everyone inside that share earned less than $10,000 suggests once costs came out — and filers who grossed well above $10,000 may still have netted nothing.

From $5,566 to $85,101 is 15.3x — the shape of a field where a minority captures most of the money. The midpoint of $20,176 is arithmetic, not a forecast, and treating it as one is the standard mistake here.

The middle half of this field earns between $5,566 and $85,101. That is $79,535 of range, with $20,176 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.

Getting to $85,101, the 75th percentile, is worth $64,925 a year more than the $20,176 midpoint and $79,535 more than the $5,566 a quarter of Used Car Dealers settle for.

The top quarter of Used Car Dealers begins $64,925 above the $20,176 midpoint, while the bottom quarter starts only $14,610 below it. A range stretched that far in one direction is the signature of a field where a small group earns a great deal more than the middle does.

Spread across a 2,080-hour year those receipts come to $9.70 an hour at the midpoint, $2.67 at the 25th percentile and $40.91 at the 75th. That is turnover per hour, not pay per hour, and it is not comparable with the $24.04 an hour a typical American job pays.

The raw counts, before anyone interprets them: under $5,000, 29,439 filers. $5,000 to $9,999, 16,768. $10,000 to $24,999, 24,274. Over $100,000, 27,824 — and 16,026 over $250,000.