Truck Trivia
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98 free Truck trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
41 free Truck trivia questions with answers. Truck trivia covers more ground than most vehicle quizzes, because a truck can be anything from a ute with a tailgate to a three-trailer road train crossing the Northern Territory. This quiz takes in all of it. There is a history round - where the word truck came from in 1611, why the British say lorry, who was building one-ton trucks in Pontiac in 1902 - and a records round built on the Ford F-Series, which has been the best-selling vehicle in America since 1981. Then the specialists: the modified F-250 that became the first monster truck, the bush mechanic who invented the modern road train, the dolly that lets a rigid truck pull a semi-trailer, and the difference between a European cab-over and an American conventional. Every answer was written against an encyclopaedic source and carries the sentence that proves it. Good for a garage quiz, a long drive, or anyone who has strong opinions about tailgates.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is a truck called in British English?
A lorry
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.
Q 02On 17th-century warships, the word 'truck' named the small wheels under what?
Cannons
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.
Q 03What makes a trailer a 'semi-trailer'?
It has no front axle
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.
Q 04Where does the British word 'lorry' probably come from?
The railway industry
It shows up in 1838 for a large flat goods wagon, possibly from the old verb 'lurry', to drag along.
Q 05What are pickups called in Australia and New Zealand?
Utes
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.
Q 06What defines a pickup's cargo bed?
Three low walls and no roof
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.
Q 07Rapid Motor Vehicle, which built one-ton trucks in the city of Pontiac from 1902, grew into which truck brand?
GMC
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.
Q 08Which Chevrolet pickup became a separate full-size model line for the 1999 model year?
Silverado
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.
Q 09Dodge marketed its 1939 truck range under which slogan?
Job-Rated
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.
Q 10Ford's F-Series pickups arrived just after which event?
World War II
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.
Q 11Which Toyota pickup did Top Gear drown, burn and drop with a demolished tower block?
Hilux
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.
Q 12Which metal replaced steel in the body panels of the 2015 Ford F-150?
Aluminium
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.
Q 13Which high-performance off-road F-150 trim arrived for 2010?
The Raptor
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.
Q 21What did the Australian government's AEC Roadtrain replace in the Northern Territory?
Afghan camel trains
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.
Q 22Which braking system, standard on heavy trucks, did George Westinghouse first develop for railway trains?
Air brakes
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.
Q 23Where did the first identified road trains operate in the mid-19th century?
Q 14Ford added the F-150 in 1975 as a slightly heavier F-100 mainly to sidestep which rules?
Emissions standards
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.
Q 15Which pickup did Bob Chandler start modifying in 1975 to create Bigfoot?
A Ford F-250
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.
Q 16Which monster truck did Dennis Anderson build in 1982, later Monster Jam's signature machine?
Grave Digger
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.
Q 17What were monster trucks originally used for at motorsport events?
Car-crushing side acts
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.
Q 18Why did promoters stop putting motor homes and school buses on freestyle courses?
Flying debris injured spectators
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.
Q 19What is a road train?
Two or more trailers behind one prime mover
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.
Q 20Bush mechanic Kurt Johannsen built the first modern road train in 1940s Australia to haul 100 of what?
Cattle
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.
South Australia's Flinders Ranges
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.
Q 24How do most European tractor units differ from North American ones?
The engine sits under the cab
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.
Q 25How many wheels does the most common European semi combination have?
Twelve
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.
Q 26What piece of equipment lets a rigid truck pull a semi-trailer?
A dolly
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.
Q 27Peterbilt began in 1939 because founder Al Peterman wanted better trucks for which industry?
Logging
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.
Q 28How much did Peterman pay for the Oakland truck plant that became Peterbilt in 1939?
$50,000
$50,000 bought Peterman the whole operation in 1939: a 13.5-acre plant in Oakland, California, together with its tooling and parts inventory.
Q 29Which group acquired Peterbilt in 1958?
PACCAR
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.
Q 30In which year was Mack founded, as the Mack Brothers Company?
1900
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.