A company purchased a new truck at a cost of $42,000 on July 1, 2008. The truck is estimated to have a useful life of 6 years and a salvage value of $3,000. The company uses the straight-line method of depreciation. How much depreciation expense will be recorded for the truck for the year ended December 31, 2008?

First you need to get the depreciable base, which is: Cost minus salvage value, then divide this number by the number of years useful life to get your depreciation per year. Since your depreciation is for a partial year you need to take the depreciation per year times number of months in the period divided by 12 months to get your depreciation for the period.