If you had to define the word "truck" in one word, what would it be? If your word is synonymous with function, utility, or use you’re probably a truck guy. The truck, in my humble opinion, was born of necessity and is purpose built. Trucks move armies, build cities, and transport commerce. They also go places nothing else with four-wheel drive setups, low gear ratios and big power can go. It was the perfect combination. So naturally, people start to build off that and attempt to have the biggest, most powerful truck! Although a primitive pissing contest in the eyes of some, the lifted-truck community does get down and dirty in some sections; namely the mudder section.

Some people will lift their trucks just for show, and that’s cool if you do, we don’t judge you. Building a real truck capable of taking a good, hard pounding without sustaining damage in the process is very expensive; it’s not a hobby at that point – it’s a lifestyle. Mud trucks are lifted seemingly to the sky and fitted with tractor-like tires to traverse deep, sticky mud pits. The larger they get, the more specialized the build must be; it’s one thing to get the suspension to hang where you want it to hang, but transferring power from the engine gets tricky when the axles are five feet lower. Come marvel at truly remarkable pieces of mechanical art as we explore a little bit into what a real lifted truck looks like. No compensator trucks here, these bad boys are rock solid and ready to roll.

27 Hercules

A mythological Greek half-god that was superior to his fellow man in every physical way; a fitting name for a truck that you’d have jump up to just to grab the frame rails. To get the crew cab jacked 11 feet up in the air, almost 250 units of 2-inch inch tubing was required to fabricate the intricate sub frame. Off of the custom four-link suspension hang two gargantuan AxleTech 4,000 straight axles. Outwards of those bad boys you’ll find four 64” tires with more meat on a single tread than you’d need to play a game of solitaire. Power is fed from the Duramax into a built transmission and out to an SCS 4:1 drop case to keep the driveline angles somewhat acceptable. The result is something you take just about anywhere – and look down on the world as you go.

26 SuperDuty Shooter

The Ford Super Duty line emerged in 1999 as somewhat of a sales gimmick. Ford has always been producing rugged trucks, and has the commercial sales numbers to prove it, but the Super Duty just put into words a truck philosophy of the company.

Ever increasing demands in today’s truck market pushes the boundaries of what a truck must endure; engine sizes and power ratings keep climbing, as do MGVWRs (maximum gross vehicle weight rating) and towing capacities.

Thankfully, there is a thriving aftermarket network of vendors to keep our trucks looking as dope as possible with a seemingly endless supply of upgrades and modifications.

25 Ram Tank

What do you do with your early 2000s quad cab when you upgrade to something new? If you’re this jasper in the green shirt up there, you live out your fantasy of having a tank – one that the wife is less likely to veto. Sure it would be hard enough to convince her that, for practical reasons, you must have a treaded vehicle, so working with what you've got means you’re already halfway there!

Obviously not one for flair and show, the square-tube chassis extension is barebones simple to look at, but seems to get the job done effectively; there’s enough tubing under this truck to mount a billboard.

24 Blue Denali

SEMA is where the big boys go to play; some the world’s best examples of showmanship are found at expositions. The truck class always sees a wide variety of entries due to a thriving community of truck enthusiasts with a broad palate for styling designs; from some of the lowest frame draggers you’ll ever see to skyjacker lifts that seem to touch the sky.

But you can find those types of trucks all over; so the SEMA trucks have to not only wow with unique style and looks, but be squeaky clean from roof to rubber.

I couldn’t own a SEMA show truck for two reasons; the aforementioned statement of cleanliness and the fact that puddles and dirt are too tempting to avoid.

23 The Duke

C10s and 20s are cool but unfortunately not too common in the late ‘60s – early ‘70s range. They are a beautifully designed body style that GM seemed to hit right on the nose. The light duty trucks weren’t the only ones to receive the graceful hand of the designers though, and this ’72 C50 is a perfect example of the beauty of simple, straight lines and curves.

It’s actually a one-of-a-kind build using the bed and cab of a C10 to fabricate the front of a single cab C50 that was a mobile home mover in her past life. A Ram 5.9L Cummins blows torque into an NV4500 standard transmission where it then gets split by the bullet-proof NP205 transfer case and out to the 40” Grapplers at each corner.

22 Swamp Stomper

I don’t know what’s more jaw-dropping; the size of the military tires on this red Z-71, or the fact that he had to split is dual exhaust into double-dual exhaust. Normally, I am not a fan of these pointless shenanigans, but for I’ll let the guy have his pipes.

If he went through all that trouble to do everything else to his truck, I think he’s earned his pipe cannons big enough to fit an adolescent boys head into.

Clearly, he’s not fooling anyone as his truck is so high in the air you can see the step up from the 3” pipes from 10’ away.

21 Shelby Raptor

If we’re talking out-of-the-box performance here, not many things on the market can compare to the Ford Raptor in the first place. The 450hp Baja-ready beast is already set up for doing better than what most guys modify their trucks to do. But when Ford has an ace in the pocket, why not use it every now and then? The Shelby brand is known for performance on the track, not the trails, but since we live in America, why not have the best of both? At an extremely prohibitive price in excess of $100,000, not everyone can own one and stay married, but just knowing it’s out there somewhere gives me a bit more national pride!

20 Swamp Donkey

Big, yellow, and shamelessly ugly; nope, not Bigbird, but the Swamp Donkey flies just about everywhere he goes. New Hampshire’s Mike Kubat has owned this beauty for around two decades, and has been into wrenching and racing since he was eight years old. He learned much of what he knows from his old man, and translated that knowledge into a national treasure that has blasted through almost every mud hole in North America.

The ’78 Bronco weighs 2 ½ tons even with a gutted cab, has 50” mud tires at each corner of a custom tube chassis which holds the fully built C6 transmission and 550 stall converter.

The bored-out 460cid big block has 572 cubes that sucks air from an 871 blower on alcohol and there’s not many places Mike won’t take the Donkey.

19 Mild Mannered Dually

Ok so maybe Swamp Donkey isn’t your thing; why I don’t know, but maybe you have a different inclination for styling. Well, if it's style you’re after, it’s hard to beat a ’17 Super Duty, even with a mild 6” lift on it. Already, when properly equipped, the truck has massive amounts of potential to look mean; painted heavy-duty bumpers with lights and winches, buff rims and aggressive tires will put you into a class of trucks a cut above. Sprinkle on some inches under the leaf springs and you’re going to end up with a rubber-neck magnet that may not conquer the deepest mud holes, but it won’t leave you hanging either.

18 Big Bad Four Link

Maybe mild is not your middle name, and attention getting is more of your game. Well, you’re going to have to work a little bit harder than a 6” suspension lift to pimp your truck out, but it’s still doable. You’ll need hangars, four-links, airbags, and custom driveline equipment once you start going so big, just don’t forget the ladder. Trucks are pushing such boundaries with lift kits these days that it’s almost getting ridiculous to see guys actually climb into them. The real commitment however, is the extensive customizing because when you’re high enough to see all of the chassis, it better look good or be a dedicated mudder. This truck has more money tied up underneath the chassis than you do in your car.

17 Skyjacker

What’s too tall? The answer is to be determined still, but the bar seems to be raised every few months with a new, wild truck design. This rig is lifted so far up in the sky that the only thing the bumper is there for is a light bar and winch mount. He doesn’t look like he cares too much about hitting things though; this thing would roll right over whatever got in its way. If I was a betting man, I’d say he has to make sure to always park on top of a car so he could step right out onto the roof, otherwise, he might not be able to get back in it.

16 Traction King

With all the custom trucks out there, you’ll eventually grow callous to amazing trucks, kinda like this one. This humble 2000s era GMC Sierra is no average truck by any means, but looking at it after seeing the plethora of custom builds out there makes this white paint job and simple red accents look somewhat plain. By now you’re used to seeing some of the biggest, most powerful lifted trucks that exist, so what’s so special about this one? Well, besides being able to cruise through Louisiana during hurricane Katrina like a Sunday stroll, the aggressive tread pattern on these tires allow this thing to claw at the earth with tablet-sized paddles; and that’s probably where all of his project money went.

15 CTX International

We’re going heavy duty now, and there’s no turning back. So, in 2008 when the idea struck Glen Harris to turn a Texas-built International medium duty XT into a sky cabin, it took him a year to decide that’s actually what he wanted to do.

No doubt unique, the Navstar powered rig is International’s first public truck offering since the discontinuation of the Scout.

Sharing a chassis with the 7300 series "severe-service" truck, it comes from the factory with a permanent all-wheel drive train, heavy duty anti-lock air drum brakes, and either a 7.6L or 8.7L inline six cylinder turbo diesels.

14 Green Hummer

No, it’s not an olive drab green army Humvee. Quite the opposite; this non-military H1 is a promotional vehicle sponsored by K&N to promote all kinds of good stuff like environmental responsibility and the like.

Why choose an H1 for a save-the-earth mission? Well, it’s an attention-getting hook; see, the pair of H1s are converted into hybrids and are actually very clean running trucks.

They are used as tow vehicles for the expeditionary equipment on a trans-Antarctic voyage across the slab of ice using zero fossil fuels. The Hummer was naturally a perfect candidate for this because of its proven capability in a harsh environment and due in part to the fact that people are so polarized by them; you either love them or you hate them, but you’re going to look at them one way or another.

13 Timeless Style

Speaking of Hummers, take a gander at this bad boy right here; the ’99 AM General Hummer H1 with a fat set of meaty rubbers on a big lift. I notice two things right off the bat; one, the truck looks just about at home up there on that lift kit as it does on its stock ride height; and two, it hasn’t seemed to have aged.

Compare that to any other body style of any car or truck from the ‘90s and it looks outdated and ugly. The Hummer seems to be able to age well no matter how old it gets; and it also somehow avoids the Tonka toy look that sometimes befouls trucks when you try to put tires too large on them.

12 Old Blue

There’s something classic about this picture of an old Ford playing in the mud. The late-‘70s F Series is a very popular mud runner for good reason; it’s sturdy as a stump, powerful as an ox, and looks good doing it. Here you can see the single cab spinning its tires in three feet of sticky mud and caking globs of it all over the paint in the process. This is exactly what this truck was meant to do. In a world full of pretty show ponies, it’s encouraging to see trucks built to wreck shop, and there’s nothing like the sound of a carbureted big block with straight headers.

11 Light Sauce

If you were to see this thing out in the streets you’d probably have to get your phone out to take pictures of it or at least gawk at it a little, but now that you’ve been looking at some of the baddest mud machines out there, this Super Duty somehow seems a bit light duty for some reason. Maybe it’s the little baby bumper or the skinny little shocks. Maybe now the tires don’t seem big enough to you because they’re not the size of your living room wall, or maybe you can’t get over that weird wrap, (I sure can’t). Whatever the case, you’re still barely going to be able to reach the door handles from the ground.

10 Super Six

With so many dope trucks and thanks to the ever-creative imaginations of their owners, it’s hard to do anything that’ll really get you noticed these days; and when you see one, it’s a special thing.

Special indeed, this Super Duty ford has been transformed into a titan of a truck with more durability than the frame can handle; the three military grade axles are rated at 30,000lbs each.

The 6x6x6 is a six-wheel drive with hydraulic rear steering meaning this truck can snake just about anywhere you can take your long bed if you know how to handle her right.

9 Blue Bruiser

Here’s another old ford with its head in the clouds. The late ‘70s body sits on a full custom tube sub-chassis with long travel, four-link suspension, heavy-duty axles, and tractor tires, although the only thing this truck is going to plow is a mud pit.

Straight headers dump the big block’s blast of hydrocarbons directly out underneath the center of the cab so you can constantly get a good read on your air/fuel mixture by scent. Notice, he doesn’t even bother with mirrors anymore. I guess the worst that could happen is a scratch on the lip of his rims as his tractor tire rolls over your hood.

8 Raging Raptor

If being a crew cab Raptor is not enough for you, what is? Apparently, this guy thinks the answer is nine feet above ground level. Matching rims for his Raptor orange paint scheme, complement the four link as well as the graphics and decals.

He’ll not likely be smashing over dunes and whoops at 75mph like the Raptor was intended; but they’re few mud pits that’ll slow him down too much.

The Raptor power plant dumps expelled gas out straight headers tucked neatly in the sub-chassis and a drop box drives the diffs. As much time as this’ll save you going straight from point A to B, I wonder if it’s quicker to walk or try to climb inside the cab.