In the sun-baked Arizona desert, Kris Kristofferson stars as Martin "Rubber Duck" Penwald, a seasoned trucker who is first passed by a sleek Jaguar XK-E and then crosses paths with two fellow drivers, Pig Pen and Spider Mike. A crooning CB tip hints that they can push their speeds higher, but the chatter hides a trap laid by Sheriff "Dirty" Lyle Wallace, Ernest Borgnine, a long-time nemesis who extorts them for $70 apiece.
The trio heads to Rafael's Glide-In, a roadside stop where Duck’s sometime girlfriend, Violet, is a waitress, and Melissa, the Jaguar driver, has ridden in trouble—she’s there after selling her car and belongings to reach Dallas in search of work. The Duck offers Melissa a lift, while Violet stays reserved and presents him with a birthday surprise. Across the din of the diner’s CB chatter, Wallace arrives, checks plates, and tries to arrest Spider Mike for vagrancy; Duck intervenes to smooth things over, but Mike lands a punch when Wallace tries to haul him away, sparking a full-blown brawl as police reinforcements spill in. The assembled truckers rally, beat back the authorities, and decide to bolt for the state line, delighting in toying with the police cars as they go.**
They tear across Arizona and into New Mexico, with Wallace in relentless pursuit. Duck unwittingly worsens the chase by nudging Wallace off the road, sending him skidding into a crash. As reinforcements flood in, Duck leads the convoy off the main highway onto a rough desert trail, turning the pursuit into a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game among dust and rolled tires; the chase ends with Wallace’s car crushed between Pig Pen’s rig and Spider Mike’s, leaving the truckers to dodge the law while Duck becomes a reluctant folk hero.**
A meeting with the New Mexico Governor, Jerry Haskins, brings a possible use of the National Guard to quell the convoy, while Wallace’s plan to trap Rubber Duck hinges on Spider Mike, who had left the convoy for his wife’s delivery of their child but is arrested in Alvarez, Texas. A janitor at the jail, aware of the trap, sends messages via CB to warn Duck and the rest; truckers relay the word all the way to New Mexico. Rubber Duck heads to rescue Spider Mike, and a handful of other drivers join him in heading east toward Texas. The convoy storms a town, smashing through portions of it and the jail to free Mike, and realizes their days are numbered as they race toward the border with Mexico.**
On the way, Rubber Duck becomes separated from the rest after a minor traffic incident involving Pig Pen, and a dramatic bridge confrontation looms: Wallace, backed by a National Guard unit, blocks the crossing. A fierce exchange ends with the tanker exploding as Wallace and the guardsmen rain fire; Rubber Duck purposefully steers the tractor off the bridge into the churning river, a moment that suggests his death. Yet the story isn’t finished.**
A public funeral is held for Rubber Duck, and Melissa is guided to a school bus filled with long-haired “friends of Jesus.” There she finds Rubber Duck in disguise, sitting in the back—alive, having swum free from the wreckage. The convoy resumes its journey with the coffin in tow, and as the bus passes Sheriff Wallace, he erupts in laughter at the sight of the Duck surviving the fall.**
