Map: Every State’s Preferred Term For A Truck

As you drive across the country, the local lingo for most things will change. Yard sale becomes tag sale. Dinner becomes supper. Sneakers become tennis shoes. The same can be said for what Americans call large trucks. In Texas they call them 18 wheelers. In Virginia they call them tractor trailers. And in California they call them semi trucks. And while everyone understands what you’re referring to when you use one of those terms, they don’t actually all mean the same thing. A “semi truck” refers to the actual truck, which contains the engine. Semi trucks frequently travel without a trailer. “Tractor trailer” and “18 wheeler” both refer to the combination of a semi truck and its trailer. Together they form the tractor trailer unit, also called an 18 wheeler, referring to the number of wheels on the unit as a whole. To create this map, we compiled a list of the top names for large trucks: semi truck, tractor trailer, 18 wheeler, big rig, lorry, freighter, semi trailer, and trailer truck. Then we ran them all through Google Trends to find out which states searched for these terms more frequently than any other state. We quickly learned that semi truck is the preferred terminology for most of the country, winning 25 states. “Tractor trailer” was the second most popular, used primarily in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast by 15 states. “18 wheeler” is extremely rare throughout most the country, but residents of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are frequent users of the term. Six states — Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming — did not have enough search data to return results. That matches with trucking industry research: none of those states are in the top 25 for number of trucking companies. But while there may not be many people searching in those states, consider this: truck drivers in Alaska ($27.04) and North Dakota ($25.49) make more per hour on average than drivers in any other state.