“What better way than a memoir about pickup trucks to forge from steel, rubber, and enamel paint a rumbling portrait of an individual American life. . . . [This is] a brilliant, compelling, and wryly humorous road trip through the motorized heart of the American soul.”—Peter Stark, author of Astoria and Gallop toward the Sun

“Ain’t just trucks. Also chainsaws and typewriters, canoes and climbing rope, a distant dad and an undying dream, love and sex and marriage and children, failure and perseverance and mortality. Haefele delivers a three-quarter-ton load of nontoxic masculinity that smashes expectations to reveal something universal, let’s call it the soul: soaring, striving, suffering. What a joy to ride along with a master at the height of his powers, hitting his stride after the decades of fits and starts he recounts with deadpan glee, now disarmingly humble—and humbled. A life fully lived, a tale exquisitely told.”—Mark Sundeen, author of The Man Who Quit Money and Delusions and Grandeur

“It’s clear that Fred Haefele loves Montana as much as he loves old pickups. This memoir serves as a cultural history of a writer, a state, and the wheels that got him around. If you take The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks for a ride, you won’t be let down.”—Steven Rinella, author, podcast host, and founder of MeatEater

“A great book, by a masterful practitioner. I marveled at the writing. Laughed out loud at the predicaments and antics of the dusty tree-climbing writer. Was humbled by a wise human’s insights, humility, and warmth. I envied him his amazing life, wished and hope to live something similar in the American West. Now I will try to.”—Robin McLean, author of Pity the Beast and Reptile House