Returning from a stint in the Air Force, clean-cut young Carrol Jo Hummer (Jan-Michael Vincent) borrows money to buy a second-hand truck, hoping to make enough money hauling produce as an independent trucker (like his late father) to marry his childhood sweetheart Jerri Kane (Kay Lenz) and set up house together.
He discovers that the Arizona long-haul business is run by racketeers – everyone from his father’s old friend and onetime partner, Duane (Slim Pickens) down to an old police buddy is in the pay of John Cutler (Don Porter) and his shady associates – and decides to fight the corrupt forces that control the trucking business.
Hummer can stand being beaten up, locked in his cargo van face-down in cow manure, being run off the road or threatened with a trumped-up murder charge – but when attacks are made on his truck (“Blue Mule”), his home and his pregnant wife, the mad young trucker takes his revenge.
In the end, though – in a pointless scene which seemingly exists just to suggest his bravery and honesty has earned him the support of everyone in town – the film finishes inconclusively with only an implied positive result from his reckless heroism.
Carrol Jo Hummer
Jan-Michael Vincent
Jerri Kane-Hummer
Kay Lenz
Duane Haller
Slim Pickens
Buck Wessle
L.Q. Jones
Lucy
Leigh French
Josh Cutler
Don Porter
Pops Dinwiddie
Sam Laws
Carnell Dinwiddie
Johnny Ray Mcghee
Clem
Martin Kove
Jamie
Jamie Anderson
Deputy Sheriff
Ron Nix
Birdie
Dick Miller
Tattoo
Neil Summers
Hy
Swede Johnson
Norman Miller
John David Garfield
Red
Tiny Wells
Sam Nedrow
Frank Kennedy
Sunglasses
Nate Long
Jamie’s Girl
Dawn Jeffory-Nelson
Vogel
Henry Kendricks
Director
Jonathan Kaplan
