A year-long odyssey under the hood of a 1950 Dodge pickup among the brake shoes and valves becomes more than a mechanic's memoir; it is a meditation on machines, metaphysics, and the moral universe. Nearly two decades after first publication, the essential dilemma of Truck still rings true: as Jerome dismantle the aged straight six, he also dissassembles our reliance on "two-hundred-dollar applicances that sport flaws in thirty-fice-cent parts" and decries the "deliberate encapsulation, impenetrability, of the overtechnologized things with which we furnish our lives."

Despite gouged knuckle, a frigid New Hampshire winter, frustating and inexplicable assemblies, and a close call when the truck rolls off its jacks, he perseveres. In the end, he admits, "I did not find God ou there in the barn among the cans of nuts and bolts." What he does find, however, is that he must make peace with technology.

Synopsis from the publisher

"I loved John Jerome's Truck... The book is not so much about automotive mechanics as it is about mind and matter ... About obsession and compulsion, joy and doubt, rage and forgiveness." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

"If there is a Zen to the art of truck repair - and Jerome proves there is - it is captured with homespun wisdom, humor, and poetry in this gem of a book." Publishers Weekly

"A relaxed Thoreauvian journal ... In the end, the truck does work and so does this book." Time Magazine

"Like Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Truck is an inquiry into values, into the nature of Processes... Jerome knows the dimensions, writes sociably and clearly tries to get to the heart of matters." New Times Magazine

PROBLEM: Hauling horse shit for the garden one barrelful at a time is a depressingly inefficient system.

Solution: Build a truck this summer. The notion is powerful. Add some clear good sense to our grab bag gardening methods, yes, but that's only the start of it. Think of all the other things we could do with it. Oh, my, yes: a full time working truck. All of a sudden I can't invent problems fast enough to keep up with the solutions such a truck would represent.

Besides, there's the building of it first, an idea that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Not a whole truck, from scratch, of course no Truck Entyre, out of scrap iron and barn junk. Nothing like that. I'll just swap some farmer out of an abandoned pickup truck somewhere in New Hampshire or Vermont, haul the hulk home, take it completely apart, lovingly refurbish and rebuild every single piece of it, and put it back together. I'll end up with supertruck, for next to nothing in investment.

My mind's eye is already romanticizing the process: carefully labeled truck parts all over the barn, tubs of solvent, nuts and bolts in Mason jars, everything sorted by size. Quiet hours of scraping carbon by cozy droplight. New Age hot rodding, the goals being longevity, use, conservation, rather than more power. Organic hot rodding? Truck as compost pile?

I should've built my truck in the winter, I think in March - a perfect project for all those days when it gets black dark in midafternoon in northern New Hampshire. Have the whole thing back together and ready to roll for April, when the six foot drifts start shrinking and some kind of high center, knobby tire utility vehicle, basically indestructible, is just right for dealing with the slop of the thaws. But the barn is not heated, not one degree warmer than outside, and the idea of a wrench slipping, cracked knuckles at twenty four below, is too painful to think about. A while back I grabbed up a hammer and tacks to refasten some peeling exterior insulation and unthinkingly stuck a handful of the tacks in my mouth for handy access. Minus twenty degree tacks. Had to come in the house to unfreeze my lips from the chill-steel bastards, took weeks to heal. Besides, I didn't think of the truck thing in time. Winter projects have to be planned ahead up here in the mountains.