Sonny and Will pick up a load from a Baltimore furniture factory whose owner has refused to pay a local thug "protection" money. The bomb intended for the factory ticks hidden in the trailer while Will tries to get Sonny to a dentist to fix his aching tooth.
While detouring around a road construction site, Will and Sonny are trapped by a landslide on a wilderness road, 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.
Sonny's comment published in a trucker's magazine about truckers being "the toughest men in America" draws the ire of the US Marines, and results in a challenge to complete one week of Marine basic training at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
Will and Sonny get stuck in Gainesville, Georgia, with a load of chicken feed when the Chicken Growers Co-op is threatened with a quarantine by the government. Will is bitten by a snake while he is working on the rig.
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 rougher, and with higher stakes, than expected.
Two independent truck drivers, one a veteran and the other his young, college-educated partner, get involved with a group of beleaguered citrus growers.
Will is taking a shortcut through the country when he spots fresh skid marks leading off the road to a bullet-riddled car. He and Sonny soon learn why the car is there: a modern-day Bonnie & Clyde . . . plus one.
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.
