You know what’s an underutilized medium for literature? I mean, other than skywriting? Truck tailgates. Though not normally considered as a viable means for disseminating literature, it must be realized that truck tailgates can hold works of literature, pending that literature is limited to a small number of letters.
So that brings up the question of how many letters can a tailgate reasonably support? To figure this out, let’s walk through some mass-produced examples of truck tailgates (one-off tailgates with paragraphs of Sharpied text that make up someone’s manifesto don’t count) to see what the most letters ever stamped on a tailgate are.
Let’s count them down! Or, more accurately, up! I couldn’t find any examples of a mass-produced truck with one letter on the tailgate, so it looks like we need to start with two. And the source of the two-letter tailgate surprised me:
MG! An MG pickup truck? Thanks to MG now being owned by Chinese carmmaker SAIC, such previously unimaginable things like a huge MG pickup truck are now reality.
Three letters are a lot more common and less jarring than seeing the MG octagon on a pickup. You know this one. GMC!
If you’d like a more obscure three-letter option, may I suggest our Argentinian pal, IES?
Three letters isn’t generally enough for any real literature. What about four?
Oh yes, Ford! Plenty of four-letter tailgates out there. This at least allows for a nice variety of profanity to be stamped onto tailgates, which I think is crucial for any literary medium.
Do we have proof that five letter are possible? We do!
Mazda! A nice five letters. There’s other five-letter options like Dodge and Mazda will have another surprise for us later, so stick around.
For six letters, we have a few options. Nissan, for example. Or, equally famously if not more so, Toyota:
Okay, let’s keep this going! We have six. How about seven? Seven letters! That’s a healthy number of letters, and it’s absolutely been achieved via the tailgate. Like on this Mercury:
We never got Mercury-badged trucks in the US, but in markets like Canada, you could get what were essentially Ford F-100s and F-150s under the Mercury name.
Here’s another seven-letter one:
Hyundai! So much seven in there.
Now eight, eight, I forget what eight was for. Actually, eight letter tailgates are kind of tricky to find. Most of the big eight-letter carmakers – Cadillac, Infiniti, Chrysler – don’t make trucks, and eight-letter carmakers that did, like Borgward, don’t seem to have stamped their names into their tailgates:
I do think there is at least one example, though:
Dodge Ram! That’s eight letters! Plus a space!
What about nine? Nine is easy:
Chevrolet. Nine is a pretty good amount of letters, but can we get to the double digits? Yes we can:
Our old pal Volkswagen! And VW isn’t alone here in the deca-letter club. Look who else boldly stamped ten letters on a tailgate:
I bet we can do even better than 10? One more, can we get at least one more? Hell yeah we can, thanks again to our pals at Mazda:
Sure, it’s more of an admission that the engine under the hood lacks pistons, but it’s stamped into the tailgate, and it’s eleven letters! In two words!
Okay, eleven letters. Can we do any better? Can we hit the magic dozen?
We can. Actually, we can do a baker’s dozen. Behold, the 13 letter tailgate of International.
I think that’s the most ever stamped onto any sort of mass-market tailgate. I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, of course, but for the moment I’m calling it at 13 as the most letters proven to be able to be stamped onto a mass-produced tailgate.
So what literature can we cram into 13 letters? I’m sure we can get a short story on there. Like this tale of automotive tragedy:
Key turn, no luck.
Or perhaps something more upbeat about driving:
Top down, speedy!
We can kind of paraphrase that famous and sad six-word short story, kind of:
Buy shoe? Unworn.
That loses some key details, sure, but we’re dealing with tailgates here! I’d love to see your tailgate-capable stories in the comments, though!
(top image source: Deposit Photos)
You forgot a 2-letter one that looked like a one-letter one from afar:
https://willyshotrod.com/Willys716.jpg
Nice! I’m shocked Torch forgot after his recent article
“INTERNATIONAL Scout”
…is what is embossed into the tailgate of my 1961 IH Scout; 18 letters, so I win.
(Well, the tailgate is the only piece of my 1961 IH Scout still in my possession, so kind of a hollow victory.)
https://www.superscoutspecialists.com/images/thumbs/0005613_white-international-scout-tailgate-decals.jpeg
Man too bad the Travelall wasn’t stamped. Kinda odd too.
The Travelall was a wagon. You’re thinking of its larger, crew cab pickup cousin with the oddly diminutive name of Travelette
“International Harvester Travelette” at 32 letters would win in Conan the Barbarian proportion.
Hmm the brief was tailgate, I guess I didn’t limit it to truck. What makes the Travelall a wagon but the Scout a truck?
I guess I’d say a wagon had a fixed long roof where a truck had an open bed, but I’d immediately get in trouble. Is an Econoline a wagon then? How ’bout a Packard Super Eight (the roof goes from windshield to rear bumper)?
See, this is the Big Grey Area (BGA) of this article. The headline says “truck” and “tailgate” so… trucks with tailgates. The examples are all particularly pickup trucks. I guess that’s why I made the Travelall/Travelette wagon/pickup distinction.
But does a tailgate have to hinge on the lower edge? Is it a hatch if it hinges above? What is one big door hinged on one vertical side (like, you know, a gate?) Is it only a tailgate if you can have a tailgate party on it? The Travelall that I pictured in my head was one of the models that had two rear doors hinged on the vertical edges, but they definitely made Travelalls with flip-down gates.
The whole van-truck-wagon-hatchback classification is too much for me to consider.
Yeah the Travelall I had in my head was my friend Mitch’s, she rode around most of the year without the top, and it definitely had a fold down tailgate. I don’t remember what year it was.. She was forced to give it up for a new first gen Pathfinder or her parents wouldn’t pay for MIT..
That’s a Scout II ‘Traveler’ with the removable top. All Scouts had removable tops; only Scouts had removable tops.
Travelall 1953-75: Light truck based wagon with fixed, full length roof; three-, four- or five-doors (counting rear cargo access)
Travelette 1957-75: Crew cab pickup based on the Travelall bodywork, three or four doors (people doors)
Traveler 1976-80: Scout II based SUV with extended wheelbase and removable fiberglass full length roof; three doors (2 people, 1 cargo)
BONUS ROUND!
Terra 1976-80: A Traveler chassis made into a pickup truck with a removable fiberglass top covering only the front seat area; 2 doors and a ‘tailgate’!
Just know that if your tailgate says KING RANCH my husband and I are behind you making up songs about you in our car.
Years ago, I actually drove past the King Ranch outside of Kingsville, TX on my way to Harlingen. I always thought King Ranch was just a marketing label to the “all hat, no cattle” buyers. I think they’re missing an opportunity not selling King Ranch salad dressing.
BACK OFF ASSHAT
Very appropriate for a tailgate
Mahindra is a lot of letters, and it’s a truck tailgate you actually see a lot of these days in some parts of the world
For most new pickup owners: OVERCOMPENSATING
I CANT SEE OVER
recently saw someone averaged sized park and get out of an HD pickup, and the top of the tailgate was higher than her head… seems super useful
You know what I miss? Dealer-installed rear bumpers on pickups that didn’t have them from the factory. 4- inch high letters, filled in with red paint with the dealer name and location stretching from one side to the other. I think it went away in the late seventies.
Depending on your definition of truck, Lexus plasters a big fat L on the nearly all of their tailgates. Does that count as uno?
L no….
2 DOOR? DREAM ON
Hard to believe this one was missed – “International Scout” – 18 stamped in letters!
Winner winner, chicken dinner.
ATOYOTA is ATOYOTA whether you’re Da Vinci or not.
(You left out a lot of “Ah-ha-ha’s”)
My first thought was International has to be the most.
Mazda should have gone with:
WANKEL ROTARY POWER
Rotary Engine Pickup
Like people turning Toyota into YO, I could see people putting truck nuts on there and making it WANK POWER.
Do letters embossed on a plastic panel count? If so, the Chevrolet Avalanche has 18 raised letters on its tailgate, 9 per word (and 9 per panel).
I have a 12 – Ashok Leyland of India.
https://assets.tractorjunction.com/truck-junction/assets/images/truck/ashokleyland-dostlite-back.webp
I have an Austin mini pick up, the tiny tail gate is not standard. It it is fibreglass, annd took a lot of faffying to do. It reads, oh wait I am not saying. but is is funny/ish
A few years ago, I bought a decent vinyl cutter to start another new hobby. A friend with a new-ish Tacoma asked me to make a giant TOYOTA for the tail gate. He was building a Marty McFly tribute.
I also figured out how to make the dealership decal as a bonus.
You could just go with the obvious, with PICKUP TRUCK TAILGATE
Nice. Also TAILGATE BRANDING, or IN GROUP IDENTITY
SPACE FOR LEASE
Five-word option: Leaving vet, pet carrier empty
Too soon.
Too painful, even when it hasn’t happened yet.
It hasn’t happened yet to you
Yes, I meant it as a generality, not directed towards any particular commenter.
Too painful, even for a person who hasn’t experienced it yet.
Ah – my apologies and thank you for the clarification.
You didn’t mention RAM for 3 letters. And my neighbor has a ’39 Plymouth pickup, so that’s 8 letters.
Was just about to mention Plymouth trucks.
The Tundra Texas Edition could rock the house down with 16 letters, but I don’t think they stamp Texas Edition onto the tailgate. On the one I saw it was etched onto a trim plate that was glued onto the tailgate. I don’t think we can count that.
International was my first thought before reading this article, but I’m sure something longer must exist.
If we include stamped model names, some Scouts had “International Scout” stamped on there too, so even longer.
This needs to be a genre of poetry, something that sounds even a tiny bit like haiku but also pickup-adjacent. Hilux?
A haiku is 5-7-5.
A Hilux is 4x4x4
Four doors, four wheel drive, four cylinder (with the diesel as God intended)
Haikus are simple
The Hilux cannot be killed
Oh Cock, I’ve been had
Excellent Violent Femmes reference.
Yeah, they do it all the time. (yeah, yeah)
C’mon, Dad, gimme the car
Gonna be stuck in my extraterrestrial brain all day now. Thanks Torch!
If they don’t all need to be in one line, you can buy a Ford truck right now that has
KING RANCH
SUPER DUTY
I believe that is a plastic molded panel (not a stamping) but I don’t think it disqualifies it (just wanted to note a chromed plastic tailgate trim is funny on a “work truck”).
I’d say it counts and we’re practically ready for a haiku with that one
I believe it is an aluminum shell with stamped letters over a plastic backing piece.
I don’t have it on my truck so can’t verify.
Interesting. I know they were making a lot of big chromed plastic trim bits, but from photos this does look bigger than the ones I remember seeing being chromed at a supplier. If it’s aluminum, hats off to them – it probably looks pretty good up close.
It’s a King Ranch truck
Made for av-er-age Joe guys
Super Duty, too