98 Fun Facts About Truck

What is a truck called in British English?

A lorry is the British word for a truck; in the 1830s it named a large flat wagon, decades before motor trucks, and it may come from the dialect verb 'lurry', to lug or haul.

On 17th-century warships, the word 'truck' named the small wheels under what?

Cannons: 'truck' is recorded from the early 1600s for the small wheels of a ship's gun carriage; only later did the name pass to carts for heavy loads, and then to motor vehicles.

What makes a trailer a 'semi-trailer'?

It has no front axle: a semi-trailer has wheels only at the rear, so its front end rides on the truck that pulls it, and it needs fold-down landing legs to stand once uncoupled.

Where does the British word 'lorry' probably come from?

It shows up in 1838 for a large flat goods wagon, possibly from the old verb 'lurry', to drag along.

What are pickups called in Australia and New Zealand?

Utes, short for utility: Ford Australia built the first Australian coupe ute in 1934, after a farmer's wife wrote asking for a vehicle to drive to church on Sunday and carry the pigs to market on Monday.

What defines a pickup's cargo bed?

Three low walls and no roof make the bed, with a tailgate as the fourth side; early Ford truck chassis were sold bare, and buyers had outside firms bolt such boxes on until factory bodies arrived in the mid-1920s.

Rapid Motor Vehicle, which built one-ton trucks in the city of Pontiac from 1902, grew into which truck brand?

GMC grew from Rapid, founded by the Grabowsky brothers: General Motors took control of the firm in 1909, merged it with another truck maker and replaced both names with GMC in 1912.

Which Chevrolet pickup became a separate full-size model line for the 1999 model year?

Silverado began in 1975 as the top trim level on Chevrolet's C/K pickups; for 1999 the trim name became the name of the new truck that replaced them.

Dodge marketed its 1939 truck range under which slogan?

Job-Rated was Dodge's 1939 slogan, promising a truck rated for each job; the badge stayed on Dodge trucks through the postwar B-series and into the 1950s.

Ford's F-Series pickups arrived just after which event?

World War II: Ford spent the war building B-24 bombers and jeeps, then launched the F-Series for 1948 on a chassis designed for trucks, where its earlier pickups had been based on its cars.

Which Toyota pickup did Top Gear drown, burn and drop with a demolished tower block?

Hilux: after the tide, the fire and the collapsing building, the 1988 diesel truck still ran once a mechanic had gone over it with basic tools, and it was put on show in the Top Gear studio.

Which metal replaced steel in the body panels of the 2015 Ford F-150?

Aluminium body panels cut hundreds of pounds from the 2015 F-150; to show the alloy could take abuse, Ford entered disguised prototypes in the Baja 1000 desert race, and they finished.

Which high-performance off-road F-150 trim arrived for 2010?

The Raptor was the second F-150 from Ford's SVT performance arm and the opposite of the first: where the Lightning was tuned for the road, the Raptor was built like a Baja desert racer.

Ford added the F-150 in 1975 as a slightly heavier F-100 mainly to sidestep which rules?

Emissions standards: the F-150 was an F-100 rated heavy enough to escape the rules for lighter trucks; buyers preferred it, and it replaced the F-100 altogether after 1983.

Which pickup did Bob Chandler start modifying in 1975 to create Bigfoot?

A Ford F-250: Chandler kept breaking his 1974 pickup off-road, opened a four-wheel-drive shop because Midwest garages lacked the parts, and built the truck up to advertise it.

Which monster truck did Dennis Anderson build in 1982, later Monster Jam's signature machine?

Grave Digger got its name in a round of trash talk: teased about the salvaged parts of his old Ford mud-bogger, Anderson said he would take the junk and dig his rivals a grave with it.

What were monster trucks originally used for at motorsport events?

Car-crushing side acts were the original role: early monster trucks drove over junk cars as a sideshow at mud-bogging and tractor-pulling meets before racing and freestyle made them the main event.

Why did promoters stop putting motor homes and school buses on freestyle courses?

Flying debris injured spectators when crushed motor homes and school buses shed parts into the crowd, so freestyle courses switched to dirt mounds and ramps, which are safer and quicker to rebuild.

What is a road train?

Two or more trailers behind one prime mover make a road train; they grew up in outback Australia, where freight for remote stations had no railway to ride, and some now pull four trailers.

Bush mechanic Kurt Johannsen built the first modern road train in 1940s Australia to haul 100 of what?

Cattle: challenged to move 100 head at a time where his truck took 20, Johannsen hitched home-built self-tracking trailers to 'Bertha', a surplus Diamond T tank carrier.

What did the Australian government's AEC Roadtrain replace in the Northern Territory?

Afghan camel trains carried the outback's freight until trucks such as the government's AEC Roadtrain took over; many cameleers then turned their animals loose, the start of Australia's huge feral camel herds.

Which braking system, standard on heavy trucks, did George Westinghouse first develop for railway trains?

Air brakes fail safe: strong springs hold a truck's parking brakes on until air pressure pushes them off, so a sudden loss of air stops the vehicle instead of freeing it.

Where did the first identified road trains operate in the mid-19th century?

South Australia's Flinders Ranges saw the first identified road trains: steam traction engines hauling wagons of ore from the mines down to the coast until railways took over.

How do most European tractor units differ from North American ones?

The engine sits under the cab in European cab-over tractors, giving them a flat front; North American trucks mostly keep a conventional bonnet because their overall-length rules are looser.

How many wheels does the most common European semi combination have?

Twelve wheels: a two-axle tractor with twin tyres on its drive axle, six wheels, plus a three-axle semi-trailer on single wide tyres, another six; one trailer axle is often a lift axle.

What piece of equipment lets a rigid truck pull a semi-trailer?

A dolly is a short wheeled frame that carries the front of a semi-trailer so a rigid truck can tow it; hitched behind another trailer, it is also how hauliers couple up doubles.

Peterbilt began in 1939 because founder Al Peterman wanted better trucks for which industry?

Logging: Peterman, a Tacoma lumberman, had been rebuilding surplus military trucks to haul logs to his mills; in 1939 he bought the Fageol truck plant in Oakland and put his own name on its products.

How much did Peterman pay for the Oakland truck plant that became Peterbilt in 1939?

$50,000 bought Peterman the whole operation in 1939: a 13.5-acre plant in Oakland, California, together with its tooling and parts inventory.

Which group acquired Peterbilt in 1958?

PACCAR, then Pacific Car and Foundry, a Seattle builder of railway freight cars, bought Peterbilt in 1958, which made the brand a sister of its old rival Kenworth.

In which year was Mack founded, as the Mack Brothers Company?

1900 is when Jack and Augustus Mack set up the Mack Brothers Company in Brooklyn; its first vehicle was a sightseeing bus, and the Mack Trucks name only arrived in 1922.

Which company agreed in 2000 to buy Mack Trucks from Renault?

Volvo bought Renault's truck division, Mack's owner since 1990, in a deal agreed in 2000; Mack's head office later followed its new parent to Greensboro, North Carolina.

Which Pennsylvania city was Mack's home for over a century?

Allentown was Mack's home from 1905, when the brothers moved from Brooklyn; after more than a century the head office left for Greensboro, North Carolina, but the trucks are still assembled nearby at Macungie.

In truckers' CB radio slang, what is a 'bear'?

A police officer: the slang comes from Smokey Bear, whose ranger's hat looks like the campaign hats many state troopers wear, which is why the highway patrol is also called 'Smokey'.

What do 'dry van' drivers haul?

General goods in big trailers are the dry-van trade: the plain box loads through its rear doors, so it backs up to a raised dock where forklifts can drive straight inside.

Besides driving, what are truck drivers responsible for before a trip?

Inspecting the vehicle is the driver's job before every trip: a pre-trip check of brakes, tyres, lights and coupling that US regulations require drivers to carry out and record.

What construction do the vast majority of trucks use?

Body on frame is the rule: a ladder chassis carries engine and axles, and the cab and load body bolt on separately, so one chassis can take a tipper, a tank or a box.

Peterbilt specialises in vehicles of which weight category?

Class 8 heavy-duty trucks, those rated over 33,000 pounds gross vehicle weight, are Peterbilt's speciality, mostly long-haul tractors and vocational chassis; it also builds Class 5 to 7 medium-duty models.

What kind of markings do modern fire engines use to be seen at night?

Retroreflectors, the reflective chevrons and striping on modern fire engines, bounce headlight beams straight back at approaching drivers; older appliances relied on high-contrast paint schemes instead.

Which colour did many US fire departments adopt for their engines from the 1970s?

Lime yellow: optometrist Stephen Solomon argued that the eye picks out yellow-green more easily than red, by day or night, and his accident studies backed him, so many suburbs and smaller cities switched.

Whose 1896 Motor-Lastwagen, with a four-horsepower engine at the rear, is called the world's first truck?

Gottlieb Daimler developed the truck with Wilhelm Maybach, driving its rear wheels by belt, and sold the very first one to the British Motor Syndicate in London in October 1896.

In trucking, what kind of trailer is a 'reefer'?

A refrigerated trailer: 'reefer' is a clipped form of refrigerator, and its cooling unit has a small diesel engine and fuel tank of its own, so the load stays cold with no truck attached.

Rudolf Diesel, whose engine reached trucks in 1923, vanished in 1913 from what?

A steamship: Diesel boarded a steamer at Antwerp and vanished during the crossing; his body was found ten days later, and a decade passed before his engine first drove a production truck.

In trucking, what does 'deadheading' mean?

Driving with an empty trailer is deadheading: the truck burns fuel but earns nothing on that leg, and the word is shared with buses, trains and aircraft running without a paying load.

Which Great Lakes state lets eleven-axle trucks weigh up to 164,000 lb, about twice the federal limit?

Michigan permits up to 164,000 pounds on an eleven-axle combination, roughly double the 80,000-pound federal interstate cap, under weight rules the state was allowed to keep when federal limits arrived.

Engine maker Cummins was founded in 1919 in which Indiana city?

Columbus: under chairman Irwin Miller the Cummins Foundation helped pay for public buildings by leading architects, which is how a small Indiana city became famous for modern architecture.

Which type of truck makes the widest use of the cab-over layout in North America?

Refuse trucks use the cab-over layout more than any other North American type: the flat nose and low cab ease manoeuvring and repeated climbing in and out on tight collection routes.

What does 'kei' mean in the name of Japan's kei mini-trucks?

Light: kei is short for keijidosha, 'light vehicle', a class Japan created in 1949; its owners pay less tax, which is why makers keep their mini-trucks inside its size and engine limits.

In countries with good roads, a six-axle truck may have a maximum weight of roughly how much?

44 tonnes is the six-axle maximum in the United Kingdom and much of the EU; road wear rises roughly with the fourth power of axle load, which is why axle counts are regulated so tightly.

Which Transformers hero, leader of the Autobots, disguises himself as a semi truck?

Optimus Prime started out as a transforming truck in Japan's Diaclone toy line, made by Takara, before he became the hero of the Transformers.

Which pickup did Top Gear leave in the tide, set on fire and put on a building being demolished?

The Toyota Hilux was a 1988 diesel with 190,000 miles on the clock, and the battered truck later became a decoration in the Top Gear studio.

Which future rock and roll star worked as a truck driver for the Crown Electric company before fame?

Elvis Presley took the job in April 1954, only months before the Sun Records session where he launched into That's All Right and found his sound.

Which dog breed has adorned the hood of Mack trucks as an ornament since the early 1930s?

The Bulldog nickname came first, earned in World War I when Mack AC trucks supplied British front lines; the chief engineer carved the mascot in 1932 while recovering from an operation.

Which American rock band, formed in Illinois in 1967, took its name from a 1915 light truck?

REO Speedwagon got the name when Neal Doughty saw it written on a blackboard; the Speed Wagon truck is counted as an ancestor of the pickup.

Which American toy truck brand's name comes from a Dakota Sioux word meaning 'great' or 'big'?

Tonka began in 1946 as Mound Metalcraft, a maker of gardening tools in an old Minnesota schoolhouse, before its steel toy trucks took over.

Which director made his feature debut with Duel, a TV film about a driver hunted by a tanker truck?

Steven Spielberg made it for the ABC Movie of the Week, and it later reached cinemas abroad in an extended version with newly shot scenes.

Which word for a big waste bin began as a 1930s trademark for a system of loading garbage trucks?

Dumpster blends the Dempster Brothers company name with the word dump, and their Dempster Dumpmaster was the first successful front-loading garbage truck.

Which horror author directed Maximum Overdrive, a film in which trucks come alive and attack people?

Stephen King adapted it from his own short story Trucks, and it remains his only film as a director despite dozens of adaptations of his books.

Which angular electric pickup truck, unveiled in 2019, has body panels of unpainted stainless steel?

The Tesla Cybertruck is also remembered for its unveiling, where two supposedly unbreakable windows shattered when the designer threw a metal ball at them.

Which parcel delivery company paints its trucks Pullman brown, a colour borrowed from railroad cars?

UPS founder Jim Casey wanted yellow trucks until a partner argued that yellow would be hard to keep clean, which was why Pullman cars were brown.

What is the horseshoe-shaped coupling that links a semi-trailer to the truck pulling it called?

A fifth wheel is named after a similar turning plate on four-wheeled horse-drawn wagons, and it grips a steel kingpin under the trailer's nose.

A semi-trailer, as pulled by an articulated truck, is by definition a trailer without which part?

A front axle is left out by design, so a large share of the trailer's weight rests on the tractor unit pulling it rather than on its own wheels.

What is it called when a skidding trailer pushes its truck around until the two fold together?

Jackknifing is named for the acute angle of a folding pocket knife, and a driver may even do it on purpose to halt a truck after brake failure.

In which country is a pickup truck commonly called a 'bakkie', after a word for a bowl?

South Africa uses the term across all its language groups; it is a diminutive of the Afrikaans word bak, a nod to the truck's load bed.

The ornate 'jingle trucks' named by American troops in Afghanistan came from which nearby country?

Pakistan is famous for truck art that hangs chains and pendants from the bumpers, and the jingling they make on the move inspired the nickname.

Which security company, founded in Chicago in 1859, is best known for its armoured trucks?

Brink's suffered what was billed as the crime of the century in 1950, when a gang stole about $2.7 million from its Boston building; the eleven men were arrested six years later.

Which truck rental firm began in a Washington garage and grew by franchising with gas stations?

U-Haul was co-founded in 1945 by Leonard Shoen, then 29, and his wife Anna Mary Carty with an investment of $5,000.

Which wagon, devised by Texas rancher Charles Goodnight for cattle drives, was a forerunner of the food truck?

The chuckwagon began as an Army-surplus wagon that Goodnight fitted with shelves and drawers to feed cowboys driving cattle from Texas to New Mexico.

Which pickup truck brand was spun off from Dodge to become a separate marque of its own?

Ram was set up in 2009 under the name of Dodge's own pickup line, and kept the ram's-head logo that Dodge had used.

Which name did Ford give to the battery-electric F-150 pickup truck it unveiled in 2021?

Lightning was revealed in May 2021 as part of the fourteenth generation of the F-Series, two years after Ford said in Detroit that it would build an electric pickup.

What usually fills the arrester bed of a runaway truck ramp, built for vehicles with failed brakes?

Sand or gravel creates rolling resistance that drags a heavy truck to a halt, the same idea as the gravel traps beside racing circuits.

Which light military truck, built by AM General, took over most roles of the original jeep?

The Humvee won fame crossing the desert in the Gulf War of 1991, which helped to inspire the civilian Hummer.

Which North American union of truck drivers is named after the men who drove horse-drawn wagons?

The Teamsters formed in 1903 from a merger of two unions of team drivers, when a teamster handled oxen, horses or mules rather than an engine.

Which Chevrolet, launched for 1959 to rival the Ford Ranchero, blended a car body with a pickup bed?

The El Camino was adapted from Chevrolet's two-door station wagon platform, and although it was based on car lines the United States classes it as a pickup.

In Mad Max: Fury Road, which character is sent out driving the armoured War Rig and turns it off course?

Imperator Furiosa drives a War Rig that the film's crew built by combining a Tatra 815 with a Chevrolet Fleetmaster and fusing a Volkswagen Beetle to the hull.

The BelAZ 75710, ranked in 2013 as the world's largest haul truck, is built in which country?

Belarus builds the giant with two 16-cylinder diesel engines of 2,300 horsepower each, and it weighs 360 tonnes before any load goes on.

Which British nickname for a huge articulated truck comes from the temple chariots of a Hindu deity?

Juggernaut is an early English rendering of Jagannath, whose huge processional chariots are hard to stop or steer once they start rolling.

Which ice cream brand sent out a dozen freezer trucks fitted with bells in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1920?

Good Humor founder Harry Burt, a Youngstown ice cream parlour owner, took the trucks' first set of bells from his son's old bobsled.

Heavy trucks stop with compressed-air brakes first developed for railroads by which American inventor?

George Westinghouse patented his first railroad air brake in 1869 and a safer automatic version in 1872, the principle that now stops trucks, buses and long strings of trailers.

Which Seattle-area truck maker, named after two business partners, earlier sold a truck called the Gersix?

Kenworth combines the names of partners Kent and Worthington; the Gersix it built before then took its own name from a six-cylinder engine.

Which device fitted to trucks automatically records speed, distance and the driver's activity?

A tachograph became mandatory for heavy commercial vehicles in Germany under a 1952 law, and analogue models record on wax-coated paper discs.

Which US state has the world's largest truck stop, a 220-acre site beside Interstate 80 at Walcott?

Iowa 80 draws 5,000 visitors a day with a movie theatre, a dentist, a chiropractor, a church and a trucking museum all on site.

Which Soviet rocket launcher, usually mounted on trucks, did German troops nickname 'Stalin's organ'?

Katyusha launchers earned the nickname because their rows of rails looked like a pipe organ and their rockets made a howl that terrified the troops facing them.

What name, first used in Somalia, is given to a civilian pickup truck carrying a mounted heavy weapon?

A technical is believed to take its name from the 'technical assistance grants' that aid groups in Somalia used to hire local gunmen for protection.

Which German all-terrain truck line began in the 1940s as a farm machine narrow enough to straddle two potato rows?

Unimog is short for Universal-Motor-Gerät, German for universal motor device, and former aircraft-engine engineers developed it under post-war occupation.

What is the popular name of the 25 percent US tariff on imported light trucks, in force since 1964?

The Chicken Tax was America's reply to French and West German tariffs on its poultry, and importers have dodged it by bringing in trucks fitted out as passenger vehicles.

Which truck convoy system rushed supplies to Allied armies in France after the D-Day breakout of 1944?

The Red Ball Express was staffed mainly by African-American soldiers and at its peak ran 5,958 vehicles carrying about 12,500 tons of supplies a day.

Inventor Frederick McKinley Jones designed a portable unit around 1938 that gave trucks which capability?

Refrigeration for trucks carrying perishable food was one of 61 patents held by Jones, who also devised a better sound system for cinema projectors.

Trucking boss Malcom McLean transformed world trade by loading a converted tanker ship with what?

Shipping containers first sailed on McLean's Ideal-X from Newark to Houston in 1956, 58 trailer vans that spared dockers from handling cargo piece by piece.

In the 1953 French thriller The Wages of Fear, what volatile cargo do four desperate men drive by truck?

Nitroglycerin was needed to blow out an oil well fire, and the film took the top prize at both the Berlin and Cannes festivals in 1953.

Which future blockbuster director quit his job as a truck driver after seeing the first Star Wars film?

James Cameron had been getting by on odd jobs, including a spell as a high school janitor, before the space epic pushed him into film-making.

The 'truck' in having no truck with someone comes from an old French verb, troquer, meaning what?

To barter is the sense of troquer, the same root behind the American truck farm, which grows vegetables for market rather than anything on wheels.

Songthaews, pickup trucks turned share taxis with a name meaning 'two rows', began in which country?

Thailand introduced them in the 1950s, and the name counts the two benches fixed along the sides of the truck bed; similar share taxis serve Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

The underride guard at the back of a truck trailer is nicknamed after which actress, killed in a 1967 crash?

Jayne Mansfield was in a car that hit the back of a tractor-trailer, and the guard proposed afterwards is also called an ICC bar or a DOT bumper.

What name is given to Japan's flamboyant work trucks, fitted with neon lights and painted murals?

Dekotora is short for 'decoration truck', and the fad swept Japan after Truck Guys, a hit film series that the Toei studio began in 1975.

On a tiller truck, a ladder-carrying fire engine with two drivers, what does the second driver control?

The rear wheels get a steering wheel of their own, which lets a tiller truck take much sharper turns on narrow or winding streets.

Which manufacturer's works team, active since 1988, holds the record for Dakar Rally truck-class wins?

Kamaz, a Russian manufacturer, has won the truck class more often than any rival, and its Kamaz Master team also contests the Silk Way Rally.

Pickup trucks sold as 'half-ton' or 'one-ton' models were originally named for which measurement?

Their payload ratings have grown over time while the ton titles stayed the same, so a half-ton pickup is no longer limited to 1,000 pounds of cargo.

The video game Euro Truck Simulator 2 was developed by SCS Software, a studio based in which country?

Czechia is home to SCS Software, a Prague studio whose game sends players across a scaled-down Europe delivering loads by articulated truck.