The sport started in the United States at the Atlanta Motor Speedway on June 17, 1979 and was the opening scene in the movie Smokey and the Bandit II.

Maximum race speed is restricted to 160 km/h (100 mph) for safety reasons, and a minimum weight limit is 5500 kg. Races start from a rolling start, and commonly races last from 8 to 12 laps. Although a non contact sport, due to the physical size, and closeness of trucks to one another during races, minor collisions can often occur. However, injuries to drivers are very rare.

Unlike other forms of motor sport aside from touring car racing, race trucks look like their road-going counterparts and conform to regulations to ensure that major components used are the same.

As a sanctioned sport it began as ATRA (American Truck Racing Association) in 1979 then was sold to N. Linn Henndershott in 1982 and it became the Great American Truck Racing circuit. The races were run on dirt and paved ovals mostly in the Eastern United States. The trucks used in the beginning were actually working trucks with tandem rear axles, using street tires, and yet speeds of 150 mph (241 km/h) were still attained on the front straight at Pocono Raceway, and the closed course record of 132 mph (212 km/h) was set in qualifying at Texas World Speedway by Charlie Baker on March 21, 1982.

After 1986 when the series was bought by Glenn Donnelly of DIRT (Drivers Independent Race Tracks) the GATR trucks became highly modified with the bodies being cut and lowered, losing the tag axle and shedding more than 2,000 pounds in weight. The last sanctioned GATR race in the US was in July 1993 at Rolling Wheels NY.

The Bandit Big Rig Series debuted in the United States in 2017, giving America its first truck race series since GATR in 1993. The Minimizer Bandit Big Rig Series had 13 races in his first (2017) season, with historic tracks Hickory Motor Speedway and Greenville-Pickens Speedway included on the schedule.