"How much is a kei truck?" is the first question on almost every call we take, and the honest answer is a range rather than a number. So instead of quoting a figure from a spec sheet, here are the actual prices on our own lot right now, and an explanation of why one truck is $4,000 and the one parked next to it is $14,000.
The short answer
Across the kei trucks we currently have priced, the middle of the market sits at roughly $6,700. A quarter of them are under about $4,900, and a quarter are over about $11,900. The full spread runs from just under $4,000 to a little over $28,000.
That is a wide range, and it is genuinely wide — it is not a case of a few outliers dragging the numbers around. A kei truck is not one product. A 1996 two-wheel-drive Minicab with 54,000 miles and a 2019 four-wheel-drive Hijet with a hydraulic tipping bed are both "kei trucks", and they have almost nothing in common except the width limit they were built to.
Live prices, by category
These figures are pulled from stock as this page loads, so they cannot go stale on you. Each category name links through to the vehicles behind the number.
| Category | Priced in stock | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kei Trucks | 426 | $3,920 | $28,250 |
| Mini Dump Trucks | 71 | $4,995 | $30,500 |
| JDM Vans | 46 | $4,090 | $19,995 |
| Kei Vans | 45 | $4,977 | $30,500 |
| JDM Sedans & Sports | 25 | $7,795 | $39,995 |
| Other JDM Imports | 17 | $4,180 | $38,995 |
| Kei 4x4 & Jimny | 10 | $4,977 | $10,995 |
| Kei Cars | 9 | $6,700 | $12,995 |
Counts cover vehicles with a published price. We also hold a number of vehicles listed as "Call" — almost all of them vehicles that came across in a single bulk import and were listed by their source without a price, plus a few specialist bodies where the specification varies enough that one number would mislead. There are 949 vehicles on the lot in total.
The four things that actually move the price
1. Four-wheel drive — the biggest single factor
Four-wheel drive is the single largest lever on price. The spread below is generated from the lot as this page loads, so it cannot drift away from what we are actually asking:
| Drive | Priced | Lowest | 25th pct | Median | 75th pct | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Four-wheel drive | 354 | $4,000 | $5,700 | $7,103 | $12,224 | $24,900 |
| Two-wheel drive | 64 | $3,920 | $4,420 | $4,740 | $6,171 | $16,600 |
| Not recorded | 18 | $4,095 | $4,893 | $5,544 | $9,701 | $19,995 |
An earlier version of this guide quoted fixed averages and a “two-thirds premium”. Both had gone stale against the stock, which is the reason every figure on this page is now a live token rather than a typed number.
It is also the premium most worth paying, for most buyers. A kei truck is light — that is the entire point of the design — and a light truck with a load in the back and no drive to the front axle runs out of traction on wet grass long before it runs out of power. If the truck is going to work on a property, a farm, a site, or anywhere that is not paved, buy the four-wheel drive. If it is a paved-yard runabout, a warehouse shuttle or a campus vehicle, the two-wheel drive is the same truck for thousands less.
You can browse 4WD kei trucks and 2WD models separately if you have already made that decision.
2. Odometer reading
The median odometer across our stock is around 34,000 miles. That number surprises people who expect a thirty-year-old vehicle to be worn out, and it needs context rather than celebration: these trucks were mostly farm and trade vehicles in Japan, doing short, slow, local journeys. Low total mileage is genuine, but it does not mean the truck spent its life resting. Twenty years of cold starts and short runs is its own kind of wear.
Mileage moves price, but it should not be the only thing you look at. A 20,000-mile truck that sat outside for a decade can be in worse condition than a 60,000-mile truck that was used and maintained.
3. Body type
A flat bed is the baseline. Anything else costs more, because the bodywork is the expensive part. Mini dump trucks carry a hydraulic ram, a reinforced bed and often a heavier-duty chassis, and they price accordingly — the dump trucks on our lot average roughly double a standard kei truck. Refrigerated boxes, crane beds, and scissor-lift bodies sit higher again.
If you are moving loose material — gravel, mulch, soil, feed — the dump bed pays for itself in your back within the first season. If you are moving boxes, tools or pallets, it is money spent on a mechanism you will not use.
4. Model and year
Across our kei trucks the model families price differently, and the gaps are mostly explained by which years each one is available in. Roughly, the Honda Acty and the Suzuki Carry average in the mid-$7,000s, the Mitsubishi Minicab similar, and the Subaru Sambar a little higher. The Daihatsu Hijet averages noticeably more, but that is a composition effect rather than a brand premium: our Hijet stock stretches into much newer model years than the others do.
If you are trying to choose between them on their merits rather than their price, we wrote a full comparison: Honda Acty vs Suzuki Carry vs Daihatsu Hijet vs Subaru Sambar.
What the price includes
Every price on this site includes free insured door-to-door delivery anywhere in the continental USA. That is not a promotional line we add and remove — it is built into the price, and there is no freight charge appearing later in the process. Most vehicles arrive within one to three weeks of confirmed payment.
The price also covers the import work that has already happened before the truck is listed: it is in the country, it has cleared customs, and it has been inspected. You are buying a vehicle on American soil, not commissioning an import and waiting on a container.
What the price does not include
Two things, and both are paid to your state rather than to us:
- Title and registration fees. These vary enormously by state and there is no way for us to quote them accurately for you.
- Any state safety or emissions inspection your state applies to an imported vehicle.
There is a third thing that is not a cost but matters more than either: whether your state will register a kei vehicle for road use at all. Importing a 25-year-old kei truck is legal everywhere in the United States, because import rules are federal. Registering one for public roads is decided state by state, and the answer genuinely differs. Some states have refused it outright, and some have revoked registrations they had already issued. New York — where we are based — is among the states that does not street-title kei vehicles.
That is not a small footnote and we would rather you heard it here than after paying. Read our state-by-state guide, and confirm with your own DMV before you buy. If your state is restrictive, a kei truck can still be an excellent off-road, farm, campus or private-property vehicle — plenty of our customers buy them for exactly that and never intend to put them on a public road.
Why the cheapest truck is often not the cheapest truck
The bottom of any imported-vehicle market is where the surprises live. A truck priced meaningfully below everything comparable is priced that way for a reason, and the reason is usually one of these: it is two-wheel drive when you assumed four; the odometer reading is unverified; there is structural rust under a tidy paint job; or it needs work that is cheap in labour terms in Japan and expensive in labour terms in your town.
Parts are the part people underestimate. Common kei platforms — Carry, Acty, Hijet, Sambar, Minicab — have good parts availability precisely because millions were built and the aftermarket followed. A rarer model or a specialist body does not, and a $2,000 saving on purchase can become a three-month wait for a part.
Our own answer to this is to inspect before listing and to state the drivetrain, transmission and recorded mileage on every single listing, including the ones where those numbers are unflattering. If a spec is not stated, ask us; we would rather answer the question than have you assume.
Running costs, briefly
These are 660cc vehicles weighing around 1,500 lb. Fuel consumption is genuinely low, and most maintenance is small-engine work rather than truck work. The costs that catch people out are the ones specific to importing: tyres in kei sizes are not on the shelf at every shop, and a mechanic who has never seen one will charge you for the learning curve. Neither is expensive, but both are worth knowing before rather than after.
So what should you budget?
A practical framing, based on what people actually end up buying:
- $4,000–$6,000 — an honest working truck. Expect two-wheel drive, or four-wheel drive with higher mileage and cosmetic wear. Fine for a paved yard or a flat property.
- $6,000–$10,000 — the sweet spot, and where most of our sales happen. Four-wheel drive, a believable odometer, a truck you can put to work immediately.
- $10,000–$15,000 — a low-mileage example, a newer chassis, or a dump bed.
- $15,000+ — specialist bodies, or a genuinely exceptional low-mileage vehicle.
If you want to see where your budget lands in practice, the full inventory sorts by price, and every listing states the drivetrain, transmission and odometer up front. If you would rather just describe the job and let us point you at the right three trucks, tell us what you need — after fifteen years of doing this, that conversation is usually faster than scrolling.