Two independent truck drivers, one a veteran and the other his young, college-educated partner, get involved with a group of beleaguered citrus growers.
Finding themselves in an accident involving Joe Shannon, a pint-sized jumble of bad temper and suspicion, they discover he is dying of cancer but doesn't know it. First they befriend him out of sympathy, but gradually they become genuinely fond of him.
Red Walker, a gambler, entrusts Chessie, his bratty 14-year-old daughter, to Sonny and Will.
Driving through the farm country of eastern Oregon, Will and Sonny meet a man pushing his wife down the road in a wheelchair.
Will and Sonny deliver a generator to Shaniko, Oregon, and encounter a single mother and her autistic son.
Will takes a shortcut through the country, but finds fresh skid marks leading off the road to a bullet-riddled car. He and Sonny then learn why the car is there: a modern-day Bonnie & Clyde, plus one.
Will and Sonny help move a low-budget traveling rodeo.
Will and Sonny deliver pipe casings to an Idaho wildcat oil well driller, and he hires them to be in charge of oil transportation before the well comes in.
Will, Sonny, and fellow trucker Ike run afoul of a small-town police officer and his speed trap, and they get involved in a series of "touch" football games that turn out having higher stakes, than expected.
Will and Sonny haul auctioned farm equipment for the Hoots, an old-country farming colony, and get involved in a dispute that ensues among them and the surrounding farmers.
Will talks Sonny into hauling timber with Will's Vietnam War buddy in Hood River, Oregon.
Will wins so much money in Las Vegas that he considers buying his own truck and going it alone.
While in a cafe in Las Vegas, Sonny moans to Will about how depressing it is to spend Christmas on the road. So they head for Phoenix for dinner with Sonny's uncle, but end up with Sonny's ex-wife instead.
Sonny's ex-wife has him looking for lost jewelry from an ex-boyfriend.
Will and Sonny deliver two trucks to an eccentric old lady who has an antique Benz that she restored herself. The next day she accuses them of stealing it.
Sonny accepts a racing dog from a freight broker as payment for a debt after Sonny's rig is impounded for a late loan payment.
While avoiding a road construction site, Will and Sonny are trapped by a landslide, along with six other people: a runaway and her boyfriend, an alcoholic trumpeter and his estranged med-student son, and a man and his wife towing their RV.
An insurance investigator is out to jail Sonny and Will for insurance fraud.
A gift case of tomatoes to cafe-owner Janey (guest Gloria DeHaven) from Sonny and Will gets them into trouble when the contents are discovered to contain live ammunition.
In San Diego after making a delivery at the Navy docks, Sonny runs into his old Navy buddy, who enlists Sonny and Will in a chase to catch his truckin' sweetie.
After delivering a load of fabric to a San Diego clothing manufacturer, Will and Sonny are drawn into a ransom delivery after Sonny's friend, the company's VP, is kidnapped.
In San Francisco, Will and Sonny get caught between a trucker pal and his wife Abby . . . and his other wife Betsy.
Sonny assists a woman, Nina, when her car breaks down, loading her car into the trailer and taking it to a repair shop. Sparks fly between them, and they make plans to marry.
The State Police, FBI, and the U.S. State Department, as well as Moose and Benjy are all after Sonny and Will, after a frustrated Russian concert pianist – Who only wants to visit some relatives, and experience the good old U.S.A. – Sneaks a ride in Sonny's trailer.
The police put out a 3-state APB, after Sonny and Will carry a load of office furniture out of Baltimore, which – Unbeknownst to them – Has been planted with enough TNT to level everything within a 100-yard radius.
Sonny's statement about Truckers being "The toughest men in America" makes it's way into the press, and leads to a challenge for Sonny and Will to spend a week with the U.S. Marines.
Troubles abound, after Sonny and Will contract to haul an ill-tempered elephant named Anna Mae to Sarasota, Florida, with the help of a cantankerous old hobo by the name of Barnaby.
Sonny and Will help gather public support for a head-strong Arkansas widow who claims to have legal ownership of a public park in downtown Mobile, Alabama.
After accidentally destroying his curing barn, Pruitt and Chandler help an crippled North Carolina tobacco farmer make amends with his son, bring in his crop, and bring down an illegal cigarette ring.
Sonny and Will take a stand against a crooked load broker, inspiring their fellow truckers to do the same, all while taking care of a darling little 4-year-old girl who mistakenly climbed into their truck, during a rest stop.
Moose and Benjy acquire Sonny's rig, in an auction, after Sonny and Will can't come up with the money to satisfy a lien against it, so Sonny challenges Moose to a race from Norfolk, Virginia, to Raleigh, North Carolina – The winner of which wins both Sonny's and Moose's rigs.
Sonny and Will must try to apply their experience to a different kind of driving: That of a stock car race.
After delivering some new equipment to a troubled mine owner, Ex-coal miner Sonny, and lawyer Will manage to bring both sides of a miner/owner feud to a peaceable agreement.
Sonny and Will must deal with a gang of crooks who are after the loot from a quarter-million-dollar bank heist, supposedly in the possession of one of 15 bus passengers, holed up in an abandoned house.
To make a large profit on a job, the truckers go in debt to hire an extra rig and two drivers they know nothing about. Sonny: Claude Akins. Cabe Miller: Strother Martin. Will: Frank Converse. Mike Miller: Jeff Conaway.
Despite Will's protest, Sonny takes a huge gamble on a purchased-load run to Canada, employing an drug-addicted old driver, and his son to share the driving in a rented truck, all while under the threat of violence from a loan shark.
With the unwitting support of Moose and Benjy, Sonny and Will help an escaped convict keep his family together, and manage to get him back into prison before roll call.
Sonny intervenes, when the partnership is threatened again, after Will falls for a pretty North Carolina widow, who has conned them into hauling moonshine.
Sonny and Will defer 3 months' steady work, in order to help a spry 75 year-old hot air ballooner convince his family that he's not quite ready for the old folks' home.
Pruitt and Chandler try to help get to the bottom of a mystery involving a sickness which affects only the chickens of farmers belonging to a farm cooperative, while a non-member's birds remain healthy.
Sonny gets sweet revenge, when he, Will, and the members of a soft-rock band work up an elaborate plan to get back at a shrewd con man, who has swindled an old friend out of a sizeable sum of cash.
After Will is injured, and the rig of a lady trucker friend is worked over, Sonny gets the goods on a crooked steel mill owner, threatening to expose the embezzler, if he doesn't deal fairly with the local truckers.
In return for some big cash, and an all-expense-paid vacation at a plush resort, and despite Will's misgivings, Sonny unwittingly rents out his rig to a mob boss for use in an arms theft scheme.
Trouble follows, after a bookie runner stashes $5000 of gambling proceeds in the sleeper of Sonny's truck, just before they make a run to Pensacola to deliver the 10-year-old daughter of a professional gambler to her aunt.
Will comes to the rescue, when trouble develops, after Sonny mortgages his truck to help an old friend finance a hunt for a mystery treasure ship, in the Gulf Of Mexico, off Alabama.
In order to get out of a tough situation, a troubled Nashville talent agent feigns interest in Sonny's singing talents, at a Trucker's convention, leading to major complications for all involved.