These are the 5 fastest trucks ever (2024)

Everybody talks about how much payload their trucks can take, even though most people wouldn’t even come close to those limits in their daily lives. What people do come close to hitting is the factory-rated zero-to-100-km/h times.

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In Canada, you’re probably used to seeing a pickup truck fly by you at three times the speed of sound in the right lane of the highway, “truck nutz” hanging off the bumper, driver’s arm out the window. This gives the perception trucks are fast – among other things – but how fast are trucks really?

Turns out, some’re pretty fast. Usually fitted with massive engines and fairly simple chassis components borrowed, it seems, from ’70s muscle cars, trucks haven’t changed a whole lot since the era when speed was king. When an automaker decides to take all that towing and payload capability and give it a performance bent, good things happen.

Here are the five fastest trucks ever.

1991 GMC Syclone

The Syclone and the original Ford SVT Lightning competed in the early ’90s for the title of “fastest truck.” It was a battle the Syclone ended up winning, thanks to a zero-to-60-mph (96-km/h) time of somewhere between 4.6 and 5.3 seconds, depending who you ask.

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Based on the lightweight S10 pickup, the V6 was uprated to 280 horsepower thanks to a turbocharger. The all-wheel-drive system also helped gain some traction that would have otherwise been lost due to the lightness of the rear end.

In its day, the Syclone could even keep up with Chevy’s top performer, the Corvette. What it couldn’t do was actually haul anything in the bed, since it boasted a meagre 500-pound payload capacity. But payload doesn’t matter when you’re haulin’ ass! With only 300 Syclone trucks made, they’re now a properly rare commodity, and likely to be an appreciating classic.

1999 Ford SVT Lightning

How much cooler can a truck get with a name like “Lightning”?

With a zero-to-60-mph (96-km/h) time of just 5.2 seconds and a top speed of 147 mph (236 km/h), the SVT Lightning eventually took the prize for fastest truck from the Syclone. Under the hood of the bubbly F-150 was a supercharged 5.4-litre V8, which produced 360 horsepower (380 horsepower for 2001) and 440 lb-ft of torque (450 after 2001).

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The transmission was also a beefed-up unit borrowed from the F-350 diesel, to keep all the parts inside the case while rocketing down the strip. And unlike the Syclone before it, you could actually use it, with a towing capacity of 5,000 pounds.

As an added bonus, every SVT Lightning was built in Canada. Pretty cool, eh?

2004 Dodge Ram SRT-10

Borrowing the engine from one of the wildest sports cars ever, the Ram SRT-10 cemented itself as the undisputed king of quick trucks in 2004. The Viper V10 produced 500 horsepower and 525 lb-ft of torque, helping drop that zero-to-60-mph (96-km/h) time down to just 4.9 seconds, according to some sources.

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Burying the competition from Ford and GM, the Ram secured its place on this list with not only speed and power, but good looks to boot. If you want one, they made more than 10,000 examples from 2003 to 2006.

2017 Ford F-150 Raptor

The Ford Raptor took the spirit of the original fast truck and kicked it up a notch. Bam! Gone are the days of short-bed single-cab pickups with skinny rubber, now you can have your quick cake and eat it off-road, too.

As other manufacturers mocked Ford for building a “tough” truck with aluminum body panels, the reality is the lower weight (about 700 pounds less) means the truck has less of itself to haul around, and the engine’s power can be used for better things.

This is true for the 2017 Raptor, which uses 450 horsepower out of a 3.5-litre EcoBoost V6 to rocket the 5,661-pound truck to 60 mph (96 km/h) in as little as 5.1 seconds. The 2017 Raptor would be a contender in a drag race against many modern sports cars, and unbeatable if you decided to continue the race past the two-lane blacktop.

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2008 Toyota Tundra TRD Supercharged

All your Americana just flew out the window. Toyota’s TRD Tundra can do the sprint to 60 mph (96 km/h) in just 4.4 seconds, as fast or faster than some of today’s sports cars. The speed comes from what’s under the hood, a supercharged 504-horsepower 5.7L V8 that also makes 401 lb-ft of torque.

Now we should note this is a hotly contested time, as the numbers don’t really add up, and while it’s covered by Toyota’s warranty, the TRD bits have be fitted by the dealer. The truck weighs over 5,000 lbs, and posted a 13-second-flat quarter-mile time, crossing the gates at 106.3 miles per hour. The time was set by Motor Trend, who are notorious for truly putting press cars through their paces (like they should).

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