The average car on US roads just keeps getting older — and that’s turning into one of the more reliably growing corners of the entire auto industry. According to a new media guide published by the Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo (AAPEX) ahead of its November show in Las Vegas, the US automotive aftermarket is projected to grow to $599.7 billion in 2026, driven in large part by a vehicle fleet that keeps aging and a maintenance and repair market that keeps expanding to serve it.
A market almost the size of a small country’s GDP
The scale of the numbers here is genuinely striking. Globally, the automotive aftermarket — defined as the products and services that keep vehicles running safely after their initial sale — is expected to reach $2.65 trillion in 2026, a $35 billion increase from last year’s assessment. The US portion of that, spanning both light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles, is forecast to hit $599.7 billion, which AAPEX notes works out to roughly 1.9 percent of the entire US gross domestic product. Within that total, the light-duty aftermarket alone is projected to grow 5.2 percent in 2026 to $457 billion, while the heavy-duty segment is valued at another $142.9 billion.
“It is an enormous market known for slow but reliably steady growth because there are 1.61 billion vehicles in operation around the world — and all of them require maintenance and repairs,” said Liz Goad, MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers’ vice president of events, capturing the fundamental dynamic driving the sector’s consistency even as new-vehicle sales fluctuate with economic conditions.
Why older cars mean bigger business
The aftermarket’s growth is closely tied to a demographic shift happening across America’s driveways: vehicles are simply staying on the road longer than they used to. The average age of light vehicles in the US climbed to 12.94 years in this year’s assessment, up from 12.8 years last year — a pattern that’s held steady and climbed gradually for several years running as new-vehicle prices continue to rise and buyers hold onto what they already own for longer stretches. Every additional year a vehicle stays in service means more oil changes, more tire replacements, more brake jobs, and more of the countless smaller repairs that keep a car running safely — demand that flows almost entirely to the aftermarket rather than to new-vehicle sales.
That math adds up quickly at the scale of the entire US vehicle fleet. Drivers logged roughly 13,700 miles per licensed driver on average this year, across 242.3 million licensed drivers, while a separate 9.8 million heavy-duty vehicles collectively traveled 329.6 billion miles. Every one of those miles eventually translates into wear that needs to be addressed — tires that need replacing, fluids that need changing, brakes that need servicing — almost all of it flowing through the aftermarket supply chain of manufacturers, distributors, and repair shops.
Independent shops still dominate — and the market keeps consolidating
One of the more telling statistics in this year’s guide is where all that repair work actually happens. Aggregate sales from independent repair facilities totaled $312.7 billion in 2025, more than double the $121.4 billion generated by dealership service departments over the same period — underscoring just how much of the country’s vehicle maintenance flows through independent shops rather than manufacturer-affiliated locations. That dynamic helps explain why the aftermarket has become such an active arena for consolidation recently: there were 354 aftermarket M&A transactions in 2025 alone, up from 337 in 2024 and 306 in 2023, as larger players increasingly move to acquire independent operators and build out national service networks.
Jobs, and a market built to keep growing
Beyond the dollar figures, the aftermarket’s economic footprint shows up directly in employment: the sector provided 4,872,300 jobs in the US in 2025 — nearly 5 million positions spanning manufacturing, distribution, and repair work across the country. That employment base has grown roughly in step with the aftermarket’s overall size, reflecting an industry that scales its workforce alongside rising demand for maintenance and repair services rather than concentrating growth in a handful of large employers.
What it means for the rest of the industry
For an industry currently working through tariff pressure, shifting EV demand, and ongoing questions about manufacturing costs, the aftermarket’s steady growth offers something of a stabilizing counterweight. Where new-vehicle sales rise and fall with interest rates, incentive spending, and consumer confidence, the aftermarket’s fortunes are tied to a far more predictable variable: the simple fact that vehicles already on the road need ongoing maintenance regardless of what’s happening with new-car pricing or credit conditions. With the average vehicle now approaching 13 years old and climbing, that underlying demand shows no sign of slowing down — a genuinely durable growth story in an industry that doesn’t have many of them right now.
