CarMax Gave Up $111 a Car to Sell 13.8% More. Why Is Your 60-Day Aging Policy Still “Loose”?

The short answer: A “loose” 60-day aging policy is not an aging policy. If your used car inventory has units sitting at 80 and 90 days, the real policy is “we'll sell our way out of it,” and that is the policy that quietly drains gross every fall. The fix is a hard age bucket discipline: keep 61+ day inventory under 10% of your lot, manage the 31 to 60 day middle bucket down to 20% or less, and work every aged unit in a strict order of customer first, merchandising second, price last. CarMax just proved the volume side of this math in its most recent quarter, and the gap between what dealers say about fresh inventory and what their pay plans reward is the reason most stores can't follow it.

By John Anderson, Coach at Lotpop. John spent most of his career running used car operations inside franchise dealerships before joining Lotpop over ten years ago, where he leads dealer care and works weekly with dealer partners as a performance engineer on LotWalk. Connect with John on LinkedIn.

Why Does Everyone Agree on Fresh Inventory and Then Ignore It?

Ask any dealer whether the most gross and net profit comes from cars that sell in the first 15 to 30 days and you'll get a yes every time. Renaldo Leonard put it plainly on this week's episode: nobody disagrees verbally. Their actions disagree.

The usual exception is the unicorn trade, the 1999 one-ton with 18,000 original miles that “can't be replaced.” Chris Keene's answer: yes it can. The same money buys two cars that bring two customers, and customers are the thing you actually can't replace.

John's challenge for this week is simple. Pull your inventory by age bucket right now. Age buckets are the three groups Lotpop uses to manage used inventory: 0 to 30 days (fresh), 31 to 60 days (the middle bucket), and 61+ days (aged). For every unit over 60 days, look back at its history. How many deals did you turn down early because you thought there was more gross in it? Or did you just forget about the car? Here is why the first 30 days decide your gross.

What Did CarMax Just Prove About Volume vs. Gross?

For the quarter ended August 31, 2026, CarMax reported gross profit per retail used unit of $2,105, down $111 from the prior year, which the company attributed to pricing actions to support an improved sales trend. Those pricing actions delivered 227,391 retail used units, up 13.8%, and comparable store units up 13.0%. The number that should get every dealer's attention: CarMax bought 47,537 vehicles from dealers, up 53.7% year over year. That is your wholesale inventory feeding their retail growth.

Chris framed it as getting lift in both volume and gross at the same time. Most dealers who call Lotpop say their front-end gross is down and never mention that their unit count is up. Renaldo's question for those dealers: if someone offered you $111 less per copy for 13.8% more volume, more trades, more F&I, and more service ROs, would you take it? Every dealer says yes. Then the week starts and they defend $1,500 on a 12-day-old car.

When you set and forget your processes, you set and forget your inventory too.

Why Does Your Pay Plan Guarantee Aged Inventory?

Here is the part Chris wanted on the record in defense of sales managers and GSMs. They dismiss aging on purpose, because they are under pressure from above to run $1,400 on the front and $2,200 on the back, and last year's number is the only yardstick.

The economics changed. John pulled the average used listing price: $27,239 in August, according to Cox Automotive, up 7% from roughly $25,500 a year earlier. Holding a manager to the same per-copy target through that shift, with no adjustment, is “set it and forget it” management. And when you set and forget your processes, you set and forget your inventory too.

Now look at the typical used car manager's pay plan. Paid on department gross. Penalized for wholesale loss. “Loose” 60-day aging policy. What does that manager do with a 44-day-old unit? Nothing. He tells himself he'll sell out of it, wears fifteen hats for a week, and finds it again three weeks later with another $55 a day in holding cost stacked on top.

Chris's fix: compensate people for the behavior you want. Pay on units sold out of the first 30. Pay on the percentage of inventory held in the first 30. Pay on how little bleeds into the middle bucket. And if you're going to spiff anyway, stop spiffing a 98-day-old car and spiff the salesperson who moves the most first-30 units this weekend.

Should You Take $29,000 on a 12-Day-Old Car Listed at $30,000?

This is the scenario Chris put to Renaldo. A 12-day-old unit, advertised at $30,000, customer in the store with Edmunds and KBB printouts, and the deal closes at $29,000. Most sales managers say kick rocks. It's 12 days old. It deserves more.

Renaldo's answer: don't be blinded by the “but.” Yes, fresh cars make more. But if you're listed at 100% price-to-market and your store historically transacts this segment at 94 or 95%, a deal at 97% on day 12 beats your own history. Price-to-market is your asking or transaction price as a percentage of the current market price for comparable vehicles. You're above your own rim, you're picking up a trade and F&I, and you're doing it on day 12 instead of day 40. That isn't a concession. That's the factual reality of where your market, your people, and your store sell cars.

What Should a Manager Do With a Car in the Middle Bucket?

John's closing framework, built for this time of year when shopper traffic drops and third-party listings swell:

Start with the aged bucket. If 61+ day inventory is more than 10% of your lot, you're too high. Then manage the 31 to 60 day bucket down to 20% or less. Only after that do you turn your full attention to selling the first 30.

For every unit you touch, run three checks in order.

1. Does it have a customer on it? If yes, stop. Don't touch the price. A customer who sees the price drop every seven days will wait you out. Read the CRM conversation, help the salesperson set the appointment, and if the customer has gone quiet, pick up the phone yourself. Last week we showed how much gross sits in unworked fresh leads.
2. If there's no customer, check the merchandising. Photos, description, search terms, placement on your website and third parties.
3. Only third, adjust the price. Price is the last resort because it's the race to the bottom.

Renaldo added the 45-day hard stop. Between 31 and 45 days, a unit with no leads and clean merchandising should be priced to leave. John's reasoning: if your store averages 28 days to sell at 98% price-to-market, a 44-day-old car has already blown past your average. The 97% that worked at day 20 won't work now. Get ahead of the market, find it a retail home, and don't send it to the auction. Bucket jumpers, the units that cross from one age bucket into the next without a customer attached, are where this decision has to be made, and it shouldn't be a hard one. Our aged inventory playbook walks through the weekly cadence.

Yes, that means pushing back on the boss who wants $3,500 a copy. He hired you to manage inventory. Yes men don't win in this business.

How Does Leasing Fix Next Year's Acquisition Problem?

Chris closed with the pink elephant: SAAR says 16 million and your showroom doesn't feel like it, and used values are wobbling partly because 2023 leases are maturing into a completely different market than the one that set their residuals. His example: Subaru sold roughly 632,000 new units in 2023 with about 20% lease penetration, call it 126,000 cars coming back this year from one brand. John added that EV leases alone account for an estimated 300,000 returns in 2026.

Borrowing Ford's phrase, Chris calls it build for growth: raise residual-based financing penetration on your new car side today so your own core product cycles back to you in 36 months with first right to buy, at a cost of ownership that doesn't carry auction fees, transport, and PSI. Lease 15 units this month and you've pre-sourced 15 cars for 2029. Customers shop by price and buy by payment, and with mainstream lease payments running from $229 to $409 a month across Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, and Stellantis products, you're also helping customers sidestep negative equity and keeping them in your service drive. More on building a sourcing strategy that doesn't depend on the lane.

The Bottom Line

Every dealer agrees fresh inventory makes the most money, and most pay plans pay managers to ignore that. CarMax's latest quarter shows the trade: give up $111 a copy, grow units 13.8%, and buy 53.7% more cars from the dealers who wholesaled what they couldn't turn. This fall, keep 61+ day inventory under 10%, drive the 31 to 60 bucket under 20%, and work every aged unit customer first, merchandising second, price last, with a 45-day hard stop for cars with no leads. Then start building next year's inventory today by raising lease penetration on the new car side.

Want a coach to walk your age buckets with you? Book a LotWalk demo.