70s Serial Killer Truckersploitation Paperback- THE RIG-

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00][music] [music] [music] >> Hello friends, welcome back to the Book Graveyard vintage genre fiction channel and podcast. Today we're going to be talking some 1970s trucker exploitation, the heyday of the the trucking culture when it was all the rage. I got a pretty rare book here. I picked this up from Eric Paperback Warrior when he was doing his live stream and I picked this up for pennies on the dollar.

[00:00:44]If you look it up on eBay it's worth tons of money, goes for tons of tons of dinero.

[00:00:50]Which is unfortunate because it's a great book. So hopefully one of those publishing those new publishers like Fathom, hopefully they can get the rights to it and they re-release it because the world needs this book. And what is this book?

[00:01:07]It's The Rig, Ronald Wilcox. [music] This is published by Leisure in 1978.

[00:01:14]There we go, beautiful cover. It's a serial killer, it's a serial killer thriller. You can call it thriller, call it suspense, call it horror, you can call whatever you want.

[00:01:27]I'll tell you what I'll call it though, it's a badass [ __ ] book. Let's talk about it.

[00:01:32]But first let's talk about the author.

[00:01:34]Who is this Ronald Wilcox?

[00:01:37]You're going to be surprised, I'm telling you that right now.

[00:01:40]Ronald Wilcox was born in Holiday, Utah in 1934. He attended Brigham Young University, can you see where this is going? And he has a master's degree in arts from Baylor University. He was an actor and a playwright.

[00:01:54]He appeared in over 60 plays and he wrote four of them. He published one novel, this one, The Rig, 1978. He's been a consistent contributor to Dialogue, a journal of Mormon thought, since the 1960s, which featured his poetry, much of it of a religious nature, as I'm sure you can imagine, including an epic poem, aptly titled Mormon Epic and Mormon Epic 2, The Revenge.

[00:02:25]Not Not really the revenge, I just added that part.

[00:02:31]>> [music] >> A great white Kenworth was gliding through the desert night, easing the Road Ranger transmission [music] into high 13. The man inside lit up a cigarello, settled in for the long haul.

[00:02:44]He seemed [music] sane enough to himself, a trucker.

[00:02:49]They don't make them like that anymore, but something was wrong, >> [music] >> terribly wrong. His eyes caught on a car in the blackness, cold as the white Bonneville salt flats, cold [music] as midnight.

[00:03:04]The story starts on Interstate 80, just east of West Wendover, Utah. Never heard of it.

[00:03:10]Uh an unnamed trucker is hauling his brand new rig, an acquisition courtesy of his recently deceased wife's insurance policy. How did she die? We don't know yet. He sees a VW bus broken down on the side of the road with a young woman standing next to it, three kids in the bus.

[00:03:25]He slows down. The young woman is relieved. She's out in the middle of nowhere. It's the middle of the night, she's got her kids, bus is broken down.

[00:03:33]She says, "Oh, thank God.

[00:03:36]Thank God you're here. I need your help." And he only stares at her. She said, "Well, you know what? My husband's a trucker. Sir, my husband's a trucker.

[00:03:45]Could you maybe get on your CB and radio ahead and let him know the situation, that we're stuck out here. His family's out here and the unnamed trucker just stares at her again.

[00:03:55]Dead cold eyes.

[00:03:57]Then he slowly lifts his shotgun, places it on the edge of the window sill.

[00:04:04]The woman's terrified now. She's terrified. She starts praying.

[00:04:08]The kids want to know what's going on.

[00:04:09]She said, "Get your ass back in the car." She turns around, tries to change the tire as fast as possible by herself while praying and crying.

[00:04:18]And then we end scene.

[00:04:20]And then we cut to our protagonist Larry Hatcher, trucker, husband, CB handle, True Grit.

[00:04:27]Him and his business partner Axel are broken down. Their rig broke down.

[00:04:33]They're stuck at the truck stop waiting for uh the mobile mechanic Attila the One to show up. And Larry has called his wife to see if he can just come pick him up.

[00:04:43]They're close to home. "Come pick me up, honey. Axel's going to handle the the rig." And here we get our backstory and set up told through dialogue. It's completely colorful. Lots of uh manly trashy trucker talk terminology.

[00:04:59]And what do truckers sit around the truck stop talking about? Well, they talk about their family. They talk about their lives, their wives.

[00:05:09]Larry talks about how much he he loves Linda. He loves his family. He loves Linda.

[00:05:15]You know, and yeah, she's she's Mormon, but he's thinking of converting for the kids, for the kids' sake.

[00:05:22]He's going to convert to Mormonism.

[00:05:25]And what is Axel talking about? Axel's talking about wild lizards. He's talking about getting it in.

[00:05:31]And coincidence, their waitress just happens to double as a prostitute.

[00:05:40]Hot to go, lover.

[00:05:42]What can we do for you?

[00:05:48]You trucker?

[00:05:49]For what?

[00:05:51]Yeah, you probably could use one of Anna's trucker special.

[00:05:56]Andy?

[00:05:58]One of them songs.

[00:06:02]>> [music] >> You not from around here?

[00:06:08]So Axel takes advantage of this situation, this good luck. And he takes her back to the storage room with a couple of other truckers and they're going to they're going to bang it out.

[00:06:18]Hey Larry, come join in the fun.

[00:06:20]No, no guys. Jean will be here any moment.

[00:06:24]Plus it would be wrong.

[00:06:26]Her name's not Linda, it's Jean.

[00:06:29]Where'd I get Linda from? And then we get a gratuitous gang [music] bang scene.

[00:06:33]Yes, this Mormon wrote this gang bang scene in this trucker book. It actually has some detail to it. I was very surprised. And then it gets weirder also because Larry wants to join in. He is weighing the pros and the cons and then finally just dives right in while he's in the stock room pounding away. There's a CB in the corner and he hears about a pregnant roller skate that got in a bad accident.

[00:06:59]Pregnant roller skate being the trucker terminology for a VW bus. So yes, while cheating on his wife with a truck stop prostitute Larry learns of the demise of his family.

[00:07:13]This is super trashy. This is a trashy book already. We're off to a good start.

[00:07:19]Thankfully we don't get to live the scene of our unnamed antagonist annihilating Larry's family. What we do get though is a scene post murder for a psycho killer who pulls off the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

[00:07:35]He gets on a black cowboy costume with two six shooters.

[00:07:40]He goes out into this field of cows.

[00:07:44]And then he shoots them. He just shoots all of the cows.

[00:07:50]Then he masturbates.

[00:07:54]Then he takes out a knife and he cuts off the nipple of one of the cows. Then he takes the nipple into his truck, [music] which has a freezer. He hangs it on a hook next to a woman's breast that's been severed. Nasty. This book is nasty. We got a family being annihilated.

[00:08:15]We got a serial killer pleasuring himself, killing cows, and human nipples, and cow nipples. And we got the our hero taking [music] taking on some some working girls at the truck stop.

[00:08:29]So, what's going on in this book? What's the plot? So, after the death of his family, Larry is completely stricken and becomes an alcoholic, loses all hope.

[00:08:36]His buddy Axel takes him to the pancake house, try to cheer him up, tries to encourage him. Hey, man, let's get back on the road. I got the I got the I got the rig. [music] We can make some money. All you got to do is ride along.

[00:08:49]And Larry just he just isn't feeling it.

[00:08:51]While Axel's in the bathroom, our unnamed trucker walks in, right? So, walks right up to Larry, sits down, and asks Larry if he can join him and Axel's business. He wants to be a fellow trucker with them in the cab, I guess. I don't know why you need three people.

[00:09:09]So, now our protagonist and our antagonist have met. Yet, Larry doesn't know that this is the man that wiped out his family. The plot progresses. Further down the line, Larry has to work with this guy.

[00:09:22]He doesn't remember him from the pancake house, and he definitely doesn't know this is the guy who murdered his family.

[00:09:28]He has to ride along in the truck with him. So, in the cab, Larry Larry assesses this guy. Who who is this clown? He's a wannabe. He's a poser. He dresses like a trucker should stereotypically dress.

[00:09:41]And for all you weightlifters out [music] there, Larry notices that he's trim and fit.

[00:09:48]Larry surmises this is from lifting weights, which is something that soft men do who don't have that natural masculinity.

[00:09:58]So, hot take, that's a hot take. Ronald Wilcox. So, finally our trucker has a first name and it's Langley. Langley wants nothing more than to be Larry's best friend, >> [music] >> or just be Larry. If you've ever seen the movie The Cable Guy, it's sort of like that, >> [music] >> only like a serial killer and brutal violence. So, yeah, there you go. The book in general is incredibly suspenseful. The writing is fluid and real. It's working-class prose and dialogue, which means it's accessible.

[00:10:27]And though I think that I'm probably the target audience for this book, the general age, gender, etc. Uh it's very heavy on the trucker lingo.

[00:10:40]So, it's very specific. This is like, if you're a trucker, this is for you. This was This book was written to be sold at truck stops.

[00:10:48]>> [music] >> There's lots of trucker terminology and culture.

[00:10:52]And in fact, I think that the author is sort of like kind of has this Langley approach to where he wants to be these truckers [music] cuz he writes about them in the same way that people would talk about a wartime veteran. Like they're down there They're down there on the front lines fighting the war fighting the delivery war for us all.

[00:11:17]And it's kind of, you know, it's amusing because it's a little ridiculous, you know? I'm sure the truckers are tough and they're It's a tough job sitting there and driving all day long, but I mean, are they really soldiers? I don't think so. There's a lot of very interesting psychological study that was probably groundbreaking at the time that is part of mainstream culture now that we all know. Like even though Langley consciously [music] commits these murders, he's also detached from himself, from his own mind. At one point he reads a newspaper article about Larry's family being killed. He's upset that a fellow trucker, whom he considers a brother, is feeling the pain of this, even though he's the one who did it. Like he never acknowledges that he did it, but he's not in denial either. It's like it's sort of like the Langley character is an actor playing the part of a real person, a normal human being. So yeah, there [music] it is. I love this book. I love it a whole hell of a lot. I'm not even going to mention the third act. I'm not even going to touch it. I'm trying to spoil as little as possible. I really, really want someone to reissue this.

[00:12:33]Please, if you have [music] stumbled upon If you're the rights owners and you've stumbled upon this video, I I know some people. I know some people. Get a hold of me.

[00:12:43]They would love to put this out.

[00:12:45]It is extremely trashy in the best way. It's trashy, it's dirty, it's scummy, but it's also really clever.

[00:12:56]>> [music] >> It's really brilliant. It's really suspenseful. The narrative never slows down. It never lulls in momentum. This is one of those moments where the book is rare and sought after, and it delivers. [music] Dude, this is Cape Fear on 18 wheels drenched in 70s trucker exploitation. It's filled with brutal, brutal violence, and it's a working-class psychological thriller with a noir tone. Everyday Joe takes on Silence of the Lambs. I only have one complaint. It's very very minor. And it's that the two main characters both have names that begin with L.

[00:13:38]So every once in a while it would trip you up and you would have to stop and be like, wait, who is this?

[00:13:43]Other than that, this [ __ ] is gold. It is gold. Somebody reissue it.

[00:13:49]>> [music] >> Don't guys, don't go out there and spend $500 on it. Please everyone stop paying $500 for these old 80s 70s paperbacks.

[00:14:00]>> [clears throat] >> Get it We'll get it reissued.

[00:14:02]>> [music] >> Somebody will.

[00:14:05]And that's it. That's all I got for today.

[00:14:08]Thank you for watching.

[00:14:10]And I'm out of here.

[00:14:14]>> [music] [music] [music] [music]