David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is a middle-aged Los Angeles electronics salesman driving his red 1971 Plymouth Valiant sedan on a business trip. On a two-lane highway in the California desert, he encounters a grimy and rusty 1955 Peterbilt 281 tanker truck, traveling slower than the speed limit and expelling thick plumes of sooty diesel exhaust. Mann passes the unsightly truck, which promptly roars past him and then slows down again. Mann is unmoved, passing the truck a second time, and is startled when it suddenly issues a long air horn blast.
Entrecroisées mais indépendantes, l'histoire d'une famille réunie pour l'enterrement d'un de ses jeunes membres, tué sur la route, et l'histoire d'un Algérien qui émigre en France et qui raconte dans une lettre à sa fille l'histoire biblique de Jonas.
Diane Ford (Michelle Monaghan) is a long-haul truck driver. She spends her off time having one-night stands and drinking vodka with her married neighbor, Runner (Nathan Fillion). Her routine life is upset when her ex-husband Len (Benjamin Bratt)
Rubén is a middle-aged Argentinian truck driver transporting timber between Paraguay and Buenos Aires, Argentina. One day, at a truck stop, he picks up a young Paraguayan woman, Jacinta, whom his employer had told to take to Buenos Aires. To Rubén's surprise, Jacinta brings along her five-month-old daughter, Anahí.
Une compétition entre compagnies de transport par camions va être exacerbée lorsqu'il va s'agir de transporter des pièces d'avion en Californie à temps pour embarquer pour le Japon.
Harry Miller et toute sa famille s'installent en Angleterre. Là-bas, il se laisse séduire par une mystérieuse jeune femme qui l'entraîne dans de mauvaises histoires...
While on foot patrol, Police Constable Don Ross (Anthony Oliver) chances upon a gang of lorry hijackers operating from the back of a transport café. After seeing Diamond (George Murcell) and Johnny (David Graham) drive off in a car with the manageress, Connie Williams (Miriam Karlin), apparently being held hostage in the back seat, Ross jumps onto and clings to the vehicle's side; however, he is quickly thrown into the road, suffering a head injury. Pretending to have come across the disorientated officer purely by chance, Diamond and Johnny drop Ross off at his home. Later, Williams is brought before the hijackers' wealthy ringleader, Miles (Ferdy Mayne), who warns her not to betray the gang to the authorities.
Long-distance lorry driver Terry (Anthony Booth) meets Shirley (Jacqueline Ellis) at a trucker's cafe and gives her a lift. His truck, carrying a valuable shipment of whisky, is then hijacked under cover of a fake road accident. But who tipped off the hi-jackers about the route Terry would take? Police Inspector Grayson (Patrick Cargill) investigates.
The film begins with a trucker at a truck stop in an unspecified rural location. It is night time and in a heavy rainstorm, and a hooker gets into a large, black Peterbilt and offers her "services" to the trucker inside. The trucker is revealed to be Rusty Nail (Mark Gibbon), when he recites his phrase "I like the rain. Keeps everybody inside and washes everything clean". He asks the hooker to go out into the rain to get wet. When she is unnerved by this strange behavior and states she is leaving, Rusty Nail locks the doors and asks her to leave through the open window. He then shuts the window up half way as she is clambering out, trapping her with half her body hanging outside the truck. Rusty Nail then drives off, decapitating the hooker as he drives alongside a trailer attached to the truck.
It is summer, and young driver Georgy takes his light truck on a trip to another town with a cargo of flour. He is stopped at a road police post by a pair of rude and corrupt policemen. While they are flirting with the woman they stopped earlier, Georgy manages to grab his papers and leave unnoticed. There he picks up a hitchhiker, an old man who recounts him a disturbing story. Soon after WWII, while returning home from the front, he was blatantly robbed by a station commandant, and later killed him in retaliation. On another stop the old man leaves as abruptly as he appeared.