9781422277102

Without trucks , a lot of that stuff would be largely unavailable. While cars moved individuals over distances never before imagined, it was trucks that moved everything else. Perhaps even more than cars, trucks revolutionized ground transportation in the twentieth century. Trucks also have been growing in popularity as a style statement. Semitruck owners decorate their trucks with logos and colorful stripes. Pickup truck owners deck out their vehicles with all sorts of accessories. Trucks have become fun things to own, as well as important tools in the economy that most people take for granted every day. Not only is the saying true that around every turn in the road awaits a new adventure, but with a truck, the driver can bring along lots and lots of stuff for the ride. A truck is bigger, taller, and more physically impressive than a car, but a little tougher to handle. Drivers of trucks of any size get an enhanced view of the landscape.

Don’t forget, trucks go off-road too. Sure, some cars and SUVs have four-wheel drive and can go off-road . . . sort of. But they aren’t trucks. Off-road trucks flying over boulders are better equipped than cars, SUVs, or anything else. That’s the distinction. Trucks look their best kicking dirt and conquering rocks. The word itself—truck—sounds like something big and dangerous, like the roar that might be made by a large beast coming down a hill at a trampling pace. The word “truck” goes back hundreds of years. It once had a very different meaning than the one associated with the pickups and semitrucks on the road today. The word was originally associated with a type of small wheel. In early colonial America, around 1610, a “truck” or “truckle” described small wheels like those on a wheelbarrow or cannon. So how did a word describing something small become used to describe something big? It’s all about scale and context. As motorized vehicles, trucks actually go back a decade or so before cars. Steam-powered trucks started popping up in cities around 1870. They were slow, ugly, uncomfortable, and filled the air with hot steam, but they got raw materials from the train to the factory and finished products going back the opposite way. When compared to the enormity of a train and the number of goods transported over great distances in the nineteenth century, the vehicle that got a particular company’s goods from a train to the factory would appear small in comparison. So, the word “truck” distinguishes the much smaller vehicle used in conjunction with much larger trains during the Industrial Revolution.

NASCAR legend Smokey Yunick raced a modified Chevrolet Cameo pickup truck at the Daytona Speed Trials. His run set a class record. The supercharged Cameo went a quarter of a mile in 17.6 seconds with a 0-to-60-mph (0-to-97-km/hr) start of 8.6 seconds, a better showing than any other tested pickup of its era.

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