Look at the window of a hot-selling new truck or SUV right now and you’ll often find two stickers, not one. The first is the federally mandated Monroney label, required by law since 1958, listing the manufacturer’s suggested retail price down to the last floor mat. Taped right beside it is a second sticker, usually smaller and less official-looking, adding anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars under a heading like “market adjustment,” “additional dealer markup,” or the blunter “ADM.” That second sticker is legal in most states as long as the dealer discloses it clearly, and state attorneys general have spent years writing guidance explaining exactly why regulators can’t simply make it disappear.
What the Sticker Actually Is
A market adjustment sticker is a dealer’s own price addition, separate from the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, charged because demand for a specific model is running ahead of supply. It has nothing to do with the government-mandated content of the Monroney label itself, which is protected under federal law and can’t be altered or removed by a dealer. The adjustment lives entirely in a second document a dealership creates and posts alongside it.
Why It’s Legal, According to Regulators Themselves
Consumer protection law generally doesn’t cap how much a private business can charge for a product it owns, and a new vehicle on a dealer’s lot belongs to the dealer, not the manufacturer, once it’s delivered. Georgia’s Attorney General has spelled this out directly in its enforcement guidance for auto dealers, stating that “it is deceptive to charge or attempt to charge more than the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price, unless the dealer’s asking price or supplemental price is clearly and conspicuously disclosed on a supplemental sticker adjacent to the Monroney sticker,” according to the Georgia Attorney General’s published policy. In other words, the markup itself isn’t the violation. Hiding it, mislabeling it, or burying it in fine print is. That same guidance specifically calls out dealers who try to disguise the charge behind vague abbreviations, like using “ADP” for “Additional Dealer Profit,” instead of naming the charge in plain language a buyer can understand at a glance.
Massachusetts has taken a similar position from a different angle. Then-Attorney General Maura Healey’s office issued a formal advisory reminding dealers that any advertised price must reflect the actual total a dealer will honor at the counter, and that all included and excluded charges have to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously wherever a price appears, according to the Massachusetts Attorney General’s advisory. Neither state prohibits a dealer from charging above MSRP. Both simply require that buyers see the real number in writing before they’re standing at a finance desk being asked to sign.
Why There’s Almost No Regulation Stopping It
This is the part that surprises most buyers: no federal law sets a ceiling on how far above MSRP a dealer can price a vehicle, and most state laws follow the same disclosure-first, price-neutral approach Georgia and Massachusetts describe. The Monroney Act itself only ever regulated what information has to appear on that first sticker, not what a dealer can charge on top of it. That gap is exactly where the second sticker lives, and it’s wide enough that a hot new model can carry a five-figure markup and still be entirely legal in nearly every state, provided the dealer wrote it down and posted it where a buyer could see it before agreeing to anything.
What Buyers Can Actually Do About It
None of this means a market adjustment sticker is non-negotiable. Dealers add these charges because they can, not because the manufacturer requires it, which means the number is genuinely up for discussion in a way the Monroney price is not. Ask the dealer to itemize exactly what the extra charge covers, compare the same model’s out-the-door price at two or three dealerships in your region since markups vary heavily by location and inventory, and be willing to walk away and wait, since a model selling with a five-figure adjustment today is frequently discounted below MSRP within a year or two once initial demand cools. The buyers with the most leverage are the ones willing to lose the deal, because a dealer holding an unsold, marked-up unit on the lot for weeks has far more incentive to negotiate than the ad copy suggests.
The two stickers side by side tell you almost everything about how new car pricing actually works in America: one number is set by federal law and can’t move, and the other is set by whatever a dealer thinks the local market will bear, disclosed but otherwise almost entirely unregulated.