When you’re first starting out in the truck business, it can be confusing trying to sort out all of the truck-world lingo, such as, “What is the difference between a truck and a tractor?” A truck can refer to any number of larger vehicles that require a commercial driver’s license (CDL) to drive. A tractor is one type of truck that is capable of carrying heavier loads than a regular (or “straight”) truck.
There are so many words in the truck business that seem at first to mean the same thing — semi-truck, tractor-trailer, 18 wheeler, semitrailer — that it’s natural to feel overwhelmed by all these terms that truckers use on a regular basis.
Luckily, once you have started immersing yourself in the world of truck driving, it becomes easier to puzzle all these terms out. Before you know it, you’ll be tossing out tractor truck lingo without thinking about it twice!
Part of the reason that there’s so much confusion about the difference between a truck and a tractor is that tractor refers to a subset of trucks. In other words, “truck” can refer to a wide variety of vehicles, ranging from pickup trucks to garbage trucks, and a tractor is a specific kind of truck. And there are also dump truck, cargo truck, and other special utility truck.
When we talk about tractors as a type of truck, we’re talking about trucks designed specifically to pull trailers. Trailers are the wagon-like part attached to the backs of trucks. Tractors are different from other kinds of trucks because they have a fifth wheel mounted over the rear axle that enables them to pull a trailer.
