How Much Does a Food Truck Cost? New vs Used Trucks, Kitchen Build-Out and Startup Equipment

Most answers to how much does a food truck cost hand you one wide range and stop there. We wanted something you could check, so on November 2, 2026, we read public purchase records, restaurant supply listings, and posted permit fees, then marked what’s a recorded figure and what’s somebody’s estimate.

Paying for the truck is a separate question, and our page on food truck financing covers it. We finance equipment, so weigh what we say with that in mind. Testing a menu for one summer? You may not need to buy anything yet.

How Much a Used Food Truck Costs

A used food truck is really two assets sharing one title. There’s the vehicle, with its mileage and its service history, and there’s the kitchen bolted inside it, which may be older or far newer than the truck. Price them apart, because either one can be what’s actually wrong with the deal.

Here’s what the guides say. Neither one names a source for its range, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise.

Why no list of individual trucks? Most sites that show used food truck prices also sell financing. We don’t send readers to another lender’s pitch. We did read them, though. Asks ran both below and above those guide ranges, so treat the band as a starting point.

It isn’t a floor. It isn’t a ceiling either.

Public records add one low number. Danville Public Schools in Virginia paid $42,000 for a summer-meals truck in 2019. The report doesn’t say whether it was new or used. It’s also seven years old.

Builders resell, too. Custom Concessions keeps a page of used stock, mostly Ford step vans from 2009 to 2012, with fryers, a four-burner stove, a griddle, and a three-compartment sink. Every unit on it was marked sold. No prices shown.

Then there’s the far end of cheap. A recycling company owner paid $7,400 for a surplus 1981 Mack fire engine from Brockton, Massachusetts, in 2022 and talked about adding a pizza oven and a grill. That’s a chassis. It isn’t a kitchen, and the distance between those two words is where a bargain goes to die.

What to Check Before You Pay for a Used Truck

A private seller won’t hand you a dealer’s file. You build it yourself. Do it in this order, since the first two items can end the conversation for the price of a morning.

• The mechanic. Escoffier’s guide figures a few hundred dollars, against what it calls a $50,000 mistake.
• Someone who’s actually built out a truck, walking the kitchen with you. Ask them what the remodel would run.
• Will it pass here? A truck licensed two states away may not meet your county’s code, so send the health department photos and the equipment list before a deposit moves.
• Hood service records, plus the date on the suppression system’s last inspection tag.
• Liens. Run a UCC filing search on the seller, and match the VIN to the title, because an old lender may still hold a UCC-1 on that kitchen equipment.
• Weight, which nobody asks about until it matters. Commercial appliances are heavy, and a step van has a limit printed on it.

Our used equipment financing page goes through what generally gets reviewed on an older asset, and it’s worth a read before you bid on anything with six-figure mileage.

What Food Trucks Cost on the Public Record

Public buyers have to show their work. So here’s what school boards and county commissioners wrote down, and these look like new builds. Only Ashtabula’s record shows a new chassis, though. Lewisville’s report gives no spec at all. An agency’s spec may also be more than a first-time operator needs.

Ashtabula’s is the one to read. The county wanted a truck for the lodge at Geneva State Park and took three bids on November 15, 2024: $220,528, $256,189, and $292,997, each including the diesel powertrain and generator option. That’s $72,469 between low and high. Same request.

The low bid lost. Commissioners’ Resolution 2024-547 says it didn’t follow the spec on the hood brand, didn’t specify the type of hot equipment, and quoted a new 2022 chassis that was “potentially” sitting since 2021. New doesn’t always mean recent. Ask for the chassis build date.

Keller saw something similar nine years earlier. Its lowest response, $167,890, missed the spec because it had no slide-out service window, dual exhaust, or dual air conditioning, and the highest came in at $264,275. Those three options may not explain the whole gap. They do show one way a quote gets cheap, which is by leaving out something you’d have to add later.

Compare what’s included. Then compare the totals.

Grants get mistaken for prices, by the way. Tioga County, New York, won $243,533 in state block grant money in 2025 for a food truck-style mobile cafe. That’s project money. It’s not a sticker.

Kitchen Build-Out and Startup Equipment Prices

Line items next. We read these on one restaurant supply dealer’s site and one RV retailer’s, and they’re single examples, not a shopping list.

Those four add up to $11,748.20. Not much, right? Set it beside a federal guide for senior meal programs, which says a shuttle bus or small school bus can be retrofitted for $25,000 to $50,000 depending on how it’s equipped, or beside any bid in the table above, and you can see the appliances aren’t where most of the money goes.

So where does it go? Into the build, as we read it. Wiring, plumbing, water tanks, propane lines, and the hood all sit between that appliance list and a truck you can open for business.

Check the griddle listing, too. It’s marked for indoor use only. Ask your builder and your fire marshal about that before you order one. Griddles also vary several times over by build, and 36-inch models sell for far less at other dealers, so a single line can move more than you’d guess.

The hood deserves its own budget line. Albuquerque’s fire department requires a Type 1 hood under NFPA 96 for any vendor producing grease-laden vapors, whether that’s frying or griddle work, with a suppression system on top, service every six months, and a separate extinguisher for trucks with portable generators. That’s one city, in a document dated 2019. Yours will have its own version, so call before you spec.

If this is starting to sound like a restaurant, it is one. Our guide to starting a restaurant covers the planning order, what a coffee shop costs by format includes a truck line for anyone pouring coffee, and restaurant equipment financing covers the kitchen side.

Permit and Commissary Costs by City

Nobody’s permit bill looks like anybody else’s. That’s the finding, and it’s why we’d distrust a national average even from a good source.

That number is old and it’s broad, since “ongoing legal compliance” runs well past a health permit. Posted fee schedules are narrower and easier to trust. Here are two.

Los Angeles County’s fees took effect March 6, 2024, and Washington County’s run from July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027, and neither one includes your business license, insurance, fire inspection, or city vending permits.

Ask about the commissary before you pick a truck. That’s a licensed kitchen base where a truck stocks up and cleans out. Washington County licenses one at $1,112 a year, and that’s the commissary operator’s fee, not yours. Your bill is whatever they charge you. Call two of them.

Rent, Convert, or Buy Used

Start with how sure you are about the menu and the market. If you’re still testing, a rental costs you months and not years, and Escoffier’s guide estimates $3,000 to $5,000 a month for one. If you’ve got a proven concept and a builder you trust, a conversion lets you choose the kitchen. If you’ve got a good mechanic and a health department willing to look at photos, used can work.

The rule we’d use is simple. Get a written number for what it takes to make the truck legal in your county, add it to the asking price, and only then compare that total with a new build. A truck that needs a new hood, new suppression, and new plumbing isn’t cheap anymore.

Chassis matter too. Our look at box truck prices covers a close cousin of the step van, and semi truck prices sit further up the weight scale. Still at the planning stage? Read how to start a food truck business before you buy anything.

What Buyers Ask About Food Truck Prices

Next Steps

Pick the menu. The menu picks the kitchen. Ready to price a specific truck? Start an application, talk to our team first, or read how operators fund new and used food trucks.