Vintage pickups, a big rig, and a tough dump truck — these truck coloring pages are all about classic American iron, from rounded 1950s fenders to square-body 80s workhorses. Print them for vehicle-obsessed kids or a transportation unit.
About Trucks
The pickup truck is America’s toolbox on wheels, and its face has changed with the decades. Pickups from the 1950s are all curves — rounded fenders separate from the body, tall grilles, and running boards to step on. By the 1970s the lines had squared off, and 1980s trucks are honestly boxy, with flat panels and rectangular grilles. The recipe underneath stayed the same: a cab for people up front, an open bed in back for hay, tools, furniture, and everything else a farm or a family needs to move.
Then there are the trucks that work for a living. A dump truck’s bed lifts on a hydraulic ram and pours its load of gravel or dirt out the back. A semi pairs a powerful cab, called a tractor, with a separate trailer, so one cab can haul many loads. Big working trucks sit on dual rear wheels — two tires side by side — to spread heavy weight, and their tall exhaust stacks carry engine fumes up and away from the driver. Park the three kinds side by side and a century of American work drives past.
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All 10 Truck Coloring Pages
Scroll down to browse every page below, or use the Print button under any image to print just that page.
A classic 1950s pickup with rounded fenders, a wide chrome grille, and whitewall-style tires. Medium — great for kids.
Turquoise, coral red, or seafoam green are the honest 1950s choices, set off by a silver grille and the whitewall rings left clean white inside black tires. Rounded fenders take the same color as the body — two-tone paint jobs usually split at the cab and bed instead. Either way, the body color should be the warmest note in the picture.
A chrome grille is stripes of light: color it silver, then leave or add thin white vertical highlights so it gleams between the darker gaps. The fenders shade like beach balls — lightest on their top curve, deeper underneath — and that alone sells the roundness. Whitewall rings must stay clean, so color them first or guard them with a scrap of paper.
A boxy 1980s pickup with big off-road tires parked in front of simple mountain outlines. Medium — great for kids.
Square-body trucks love two-tone paint: brown over tan, or blue over silver, split in a straight line along the body side. The mountains behind it stay pale blue-gray, and those big off-road tires go dark and chunky so the truck sits planted in front of the view. The split line is a gift: it tells you exactly where one color stops and the next begins.
Flat panels want flat color — resist shading the doors and bed, and save your effort for the tire treads, blocked in dark with lighter tops. Distance works quietly here: the paler and softer the mountains, the more the crisp truck advances toward you. A pale strip of ground shadow under the truck keeps the pale mountains from floating it away.
A sleek 1950s pickup with pine trees rising behind its cab and bed. Medium — great for kids.
With pine trees rising behind it, this sleek fifties pickup looks best in a warm color — cream, soft red, or butterscotch — that argues cheerfully with all that cool green. Vary the trees themselves from deep green at the front to lighter green behind. The cab's windows can take the sky's palest blue, a small reflection that wakes the whole truck up.
Trees read as forest when no two are exactly alike, so mix your greens tree by tree and overlap darker ones in front. Keep the truck's color smooth and even by contrast; a polished machine against rough pines is the whole picture's charm. Finish with the truck's shadow, a soft gray-green patch beneath it that belongs to the forest floor.
A vintage Ford-style pickup with a bold V8 grille badge, set against pine trees and puffy clouds. Medium — great for kids.
The V8 badge on the grille is a tiny flag, so make it count: gold or bright red on a small field, while the truck around it wears classic Ford blue, red, or black. Pines behind, puffy clouds above — greens and white with the truck rich between them. That restraint makes the badge's small splash of color feel like a signature.
Small bright details get colored last, when the big areas can no longer smudge them. Give the clouds soft gray bottoms but leave their tops white, and add one light gray shadow under the truck so it stands on the ground instead of floating in front of the trees. One dark line of shadow under the truck ties it to the same ground the trees grow from.
A 1970s Ford pickup shown from the front three-quarter view with its wide rectangular grille. Medium — great for kids.
Front three-quarter views are all about that wide rectangular grille, so the body color can stay calm — mustard, pale blue, or sage — while the grille does the talking in silver-gray. Headlights take the palest yellow, almost white, like glass catching daylight. Chrome trim, kept to a few bright lines, will make the calm body color look deliberate.
Grids reward a pattern: alternate the grille's rectangles very slightly, lighter and darker silver, row by row, and the mesh gains depth without any new lines. The three-quarter angle means one side of the truck is turned from the light — shade that side a half-step deeper all over. row after row.
A vintage pickup parked in a grassy field with layered mountains and a huge cloud overhead. Medium — great for kids.
Layered mountains and one huge cloud make this a landscape with a truck in it. Color the far hills the lightest green, the near field the richest, and park a sage green or dusty red vintage pickup in the middle where the greens meet. The huge cloud should stay the lightest shape in the sky so the layered hills can darken beneath it.
Work back to front so the pale distance is finished before your hand drags through it: sky, cloud, far hills, near field, then the truck last and darkest. That order is how landscape painters have always built depth, and it works with crayons exactly as well as oils. on every landscape.
A vintage pickup with a slatted grille parked beside a wooden barn with leafy trees. Medium — great for kids.
A red barn is the law of farm pictures, so let the barn be red and choose the pickup to complement it — cream, teal, or soft black all sit well against red and the leafy green trees. The slatted grille takes dark gaps between silver slats. Weathered gray for the barn's shadowed side gives the red a partner and the scene a time of day.
Vertical barn boards shade with vertical strokes, a touch darker at each board's edge, and the wall gains real wood. The trees want the opposite treatment: dabs and scribbles of two greens, denser at the edges of each leafy mass, so they look grown rather than drawn. leaf by imagined leaf.
A burly dump truck with a tall exhaust stack, dual rear wheels, and a ribbed cargo bed, backed by pine trees. Medium — great for kids.
Construction colors report for duty: a dump bed in safety yellow or orange, a cab in blue or red, and the tall exhaust stack in gradient silver. The ribbed bed is the biggest surface in the drawing, so its color choice decides the whole page — pick the bold one.
Each rib of the bed shades the same way: light on its upper face, darker underneath, repeated all the way down like a staircase of light. The dual rear wheels go darkest of all, and a soft gray shadow pooled beneath the truck sells its weight. The pine trees behind can stay simpler and paler than the truck so the machine keeps the foreground.
A friendly cartoon-style 1950s pickup with a rounded cab under big fluffy clouds. Medium — great for kids.
Cartoon styling forgives everything, so give this fifties pickup bubblegum pink, sky blue, or mint, big fluffy clouds left white, and a smile's worth of bright color in every panel. There is no realistic option and that is the point. Even the tires can be a friendly dark gray instead of black, with white shine left in the hubcaps.
Flat and bright beats shaded and careful here — markers or crayons laid down in one confident layer. If you want one touch of depth, a single darker line of the truck's own color under the cab and along the bed's lower edge is plenty. This is the page to hand to a younger colorist who wants the grown-up trucks without the grown-up details.
A cartoon semi truck with a tall smokestack, riveted cargo bed, and bold black outlines. Medium — great for kids.
Friendly-giant rules govern this cartoon semi: dress it boldly: red cab, silver-gray cargo bed dotted with dark rivets, and a black or chrome stack. The bold outlines suit markers, and the rivets make a ready-made pattern across the biggest shape. The whole design is a toy at heart, and its colors should admit it.
Dot every rivet the same dark gray in neat rows — that repetition is what makes the bed read as riveted metal instead of a plain box. Keep the wheels big and black with simple gray hubs, and leave a white shine stripe down the stack so it reads as pipe, not pole.
Coloring Tips for Trucks
- Classic two-tone: paint the cab one color and the bed another — vintage trucks looked great in red/white or teal/cream.
- Chrome bits: color bumpers, grilles, and mirrors light gray with a white highlight stripe for a chrome look.
- Tires: solid black tires with light-gray hubcaps; add a thin whitewall ring for 1950s style.
- Backgrounds: a quick blue sky and green grass strip behind the truck finishes the page in seconds.
- Markers lay down the bold flat colors these trucks want; use a fine tip for the grille slats.
FAQ
Can I use these in my classroom?
Yes — free for personal and classroom use.
What size paper should I print on?
US Letter (8.5x11) works best; A4 is fine with fit-to-page enabled. Each coloring page below has its own Download and Print buttons.
Why do big trucks have double wheels at the back?
Heavy loads would squash a single pair of tires and overheat them, so big trucks double up: two wheels bolted together on each side spread the weight over more rubber and more road. It also means one tire can fail without the truck tipping or stopping dead, which matters when the cargo weighs as much as a house.
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