money & economicsWikipedia1866 · USA
The food truck descends from 1866 cattle-trail chuckwagons and 1872 Providence lunch wagons
The food truck has roots in the American chuckwagon. In 1866 cattle rancher Charles Goodnight fitted an old army wagon with shelves and stocked it with food and cooking supplies for cowhands on months-long cattle drives. In 1872 food vendor Walter Scott sold sandwiches and coffee from a converted covered wagon parked outside a newspaper office in Providence, Rhode Island, calling it a kitchen on wheels. By the 1880s lunch wagons built in Worcester, Massachusetts, had sinks, stoves and refrigerators.
A food truck works by putting a full kitchen inside a vehicle, so the vendor can sell where customers already are. The early versions did this with wagons fitted with shelving, water barrels and stoves, and later with motorised trucks.
Food trucks grew sharply after the Great Recession, when laid-off restaurant chefs found a cheaper way into business than a brick-and-mortar restaurant. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 44,119 people in food-truck jobs by 2024, up 907% since 2000. Their 19th-century ancestors were built for workers on the move, which is still their role at construction sites today.
Mobile kitchens repeatedly appeared where people were on the move: cattle drives, newspaper offices, army bases. In each case a cheap portable kitchen met a crowd that couldn't easily get a sit-down meal.
Blue-collar food trucks are nicknamed roach coaches or gut trucks.
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Image: Wikimedia Commons
