In 2025, U.S.-based manufacturers paid a total of $30.37 billion in warranty claims, an increase of 4% from 2024. They set aside $33.41 billion in warranty accruals, an increase of 7%. They held $71.89 billion in warranty reserves at the end of 2025, an unprecedented 17% increase from the end of 2024.
For the twenty-third year, we present our annual report on the product warranty expenses of all U.S.-based manufacturers. These data encompass all of the limited warranty expenses reported by manufacturers that are publicly traded in the United States — with the caveat that not every manufacturer follows the rules and reports its warranty costs.
99.8% of U.S.-based manufacturers that provide product warranties have published their 2025 annual reports. This week, we're beginning our series of newsletters analyzing U.S. product warranty expenses. Warranty Week's full data set encompasses over 1,400 manufacturers, across 23 years, three manufacturing sectors, and 18 industry groups.
This week, we're starting with a smaller, key group of manufacturers: the top 100 U.S.-based warranty providers, based on the amount of product warranty claims paid in 2025.
Rising parts and labor costs, labor shortages, inflation, and currency devaluations drove up warranty costs for almost every global automotive OEM in 2024. This was the second year in a row where we saw new record high totals for all three warranty metrics.
Keep in mind that U.S. tariffs don't come into play in these data, since they were implemented in 2025. However, we expect global warranty costs to continue to rise due to these factors. In addition, global currency fluctuations and devaluations against the U.S. dollar, the currency we use for this newsletter, have impacted both the actual cost of warranty work, and the cost on paper when converted into USD.
About half of the world's largest construction, mining, and agricultural equipment manufacturers report their warranty expenses. About three-quarters of the top ten largest global heavy equipment manufacturers report their warranty costs, including the top three OEMs, which collectively accounted for one-third of all global construction equipment sales in 2024: Caterpillar Inc., Komatsu Ltd., and Deere & Co.
We're tracking the top 55 global heavy equipment manufacturers, of which 23 include their warranty expenses in their annual reports. Together, we estimate that these 23 OEMs accounted for about 82% of the global heavy equipment industry's total warranty expenses. We then fashioned estimates for the remaining 18% of global heavy equipment warranty expenses racked up by the other 32 OEMs.
Over the past few years, every once in a while, a set of warranty expense numbers comes in that makes us wonder if there's been a typographical error in a company's annual report. Suddenly, there's a billion-dollar warranty expense and there's no explanation at all anywhere in the document.
Other times, a major safety recall or some other big event makes the news, and inevitably it gets reduced into a major escalation in a company's warranty expenses. For these, we don't need any additional explanations, but we never do find out exactly how much it costs.
