Trucks. We love ’em around here at BangShift. Over the years there have been a bunch of kick ass trucks on both the big and small screen. We scoured our tiny pea-brains to come up with the 11 coolest TV and movie trucks of all time. It seems like the list is Chevy heavy but that must mean that GM’s PR department did a better job getting their junk on screen than the Ford boys did!

Another thing you will notice is that most of these trucks hail from the 1970s and 1980s. Were their any cool shows with neat trucks in them during the 1990s? What the heck happened? Did we miss some? Tell us how dumb we are!

THE TOP 11 COOLEST-EVER TV AND MOVIE TRUCKS

11) The dually from Cannonball Run: This one’s basically for Chad, since he has a thing for ’73-’87 Chevy and GMC duallies.

10) Cooter’s tow truck from Dukes: Ol’ Cooter had two tow rigs, but this one that apears to be a ’67 Ford is the cooler one. We loved it when he drove it like it was the General or something.

9) The Dodge Power Wagon from Simon and Simon: This one is the truck that set the image for all 4x4s in Chad’s youth, and is the only Dodge on our list. What’s with that?

8) Jeep Gladiator from Tremors: Freiburger has one almost exactly like this, but different.

7) Cletus Snow’s Kenworth: Are you really going to ask what movie we’re talking about? This is the tractor-trailer that made semis cool, as far as we’re concerned, but with apologies to Kris Kristofferson. And do we have to explain that reference?

6) The Peterbilt from Duel: Duel is not necessarily a car movie, even though the entire thing is a chase. Dennis Weaver is driving for his life in a little six-cylinder Valiant while a demonic old big rig tries to kill him. That truck is number six on the list. The truck was a 1955 Peterbilt 351 and frankly is the most satanic vehicle to ever grace the big screen. During the film, while Weaver is on the verge of tears and breathing heavy, all you ever see of the guy driving the rig is a greasy hand on the gearshift. It swan dives off a cliff at the end. Hasta la vista baby.

5) K.I.T.T.’s nemisis Goliath from Knight Rider: Yeah, yeah, it’s another rig and another Peterbilt at that. This one
was a cab-over model 352 and traumatized Lohnes as a kid when it nearly
killed K.I.T.T. In a legendarily campy couple of episodes, Hasselhoff
played Michael Knight as well as his evil twin Garthe. Garthe had the
truck worked over into in invincible battleship on wheels with the sole
mission being the destruction of K.I.T.T. Shockingly, he failed and the
series trooped on, much to the delight of kids across America.

4) Rocky’s GMC from Rockford Files: The Firebird got all the glory, but there were a couple other neat vehicles running around on Rockford Files. Jim’s dad “Rocky” drove a pretty cool 4×4 GMC shortbed that was kind of a prerunner to the Fall Guy truck. We’re totally dreaming of having a late-’70s/early-’80s truck now.

3) Bigfoot 1 in Take This Job and Shove It: This movie produced more than just a hit song for Johnny Paycheck. It launched the career of Bob Chandler’s Bigfoot, the original monster truck, and in some strange way kicked off the craze. In the movie, Bigfoot is put to work competing at an off-road race, which it wins. Apparently, in the process of the filming, the truck was virtually destroyed and had to be completely overhauled after all was said and done. This truck is killer in this phase before the truly huge tires got bolted on and before the idea of “monster trucks” even existed. At the time it was the baddest ass 4×4 in the country.

2) The A-Team Van: We can only guess how many bazillions of dollars were made selling all of the toys associated with the A-Team, especially the killer van. It sure seemed mean on the screen, but the fact is, the thing was powered by a wimpy two-barrel 350. With Mr. T at the helm, there’s still a small piece of our inner child craving a ride.

1) The Fall Guy truck: Was there any other possible choice?! Without fail, this truck would
get jumped, crashed, slid, or crushed to within an inch of its life during some part of every episode of Fall Guy. Although tame by today’s standards,back when Lee Majors was rocking thisthing on small screens across America, it was huge. They went through A LOT of these babies during filming. Some were big-blocks, some small, and even in some episodes, he starts out with a longbed and ends up with a shorty. One stunt truck was mid-engined for better balance on the big jumps. The 80s ruled, and given the chance we would build a truck identical to this one tomorrow.