Chevy K20 Square Body Pulls 400k-Lb Trailer, Snaps a Diff, Gets WhistlinDiesel-Massacred

The 1985 Apple Red K20 Chevrolet in the video is one of the sharpest-looking examples left around, and it packs a punch even after nearly 40 years. The vehicle’s history is irrelevant; it’s its future we are talking about here, given its new YouTube stardom career. Given how it is owned and operated by Cody Detwiler, the truck already has two wheels in the crusher.

But before butchering an excellent vintage pickup, the Youtuber sets to demonstrate that Chevy trucks used to stand for something, and ‘Made in America’ was a proof of warranty alone. The ‘tough on the job and easy on the buck’ slogan from the period commercials is about to get tested, WhistlinDiesel style.

The YouTuber has built a massive audience over social networks and a vastly more impressive army of keyboard warriors who disapprove strongly, from behind their home routers, of his methods of monetizing content. On the other side, there’s the laid-back community that enjoys the anti-clickbait havoc from the vlogger’s videos.

The K20 truck has it easy at first, replicating one of the most famous Chevrolet Trucks commercials of all (see the original ad in the second video). However, it’s not an entire forest worth of logs that this mint Chevy is about to cross its front and rear diffs with, but heavy machinery. Really heavy – estimated by the equipment supplier at roughly 400,000 lbs (181.2 tons) – not too far from the 187-ton highwater mark set by the Cheyenne of the seventies.

The sturdy truck gets the road train on the move and ends up with a fractured rear driveshaft. If anyone cries ‘metal fatigue,’ I urge them to consult the operating and service manuals for third-gen square bodies. I will bet anyone a week away from any internet connection that nothing in the General Motors literature claims hauling capabilities one-hundred-fold over the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating.

Before this tug-of-war against four hunks of earth-moving steel and their associated trailers, the pickup made quick warm-up work of towing a cargo plane (C-130, 100,000 lbs. / 45 tons). Things get really messy after the heavy lifting is over, and the WhistlinDiesel crush-fest begins. Apparently, tying a ratchet strap to the rear wheels isn’t the DoT-approved procedure for securing timber. Or any other type of cargo, for that matter.

What it is, though, is one helluva publicity stunt for the manufacturer of the said strap that bends the bed’s sides like tin foil. However, ‘Nothing works like a Chevy truck’ (the marketing motto of Chevrolet commercial vehicles) gets its semantics realigned when Detwiler starts wrenching on it. Surprisingly, the expression ‘flipping a truck’ is a metaphor and should be taken in its spirit rather than lexical form.

Before attempting to inspect the underside of the car, the YouTuber put the truck through its V8 paces (sadly, we don’t know – yet! – what the engine is since there’s no info about the car’s specs) in a tug-of-war against an older – and beat-up – Toyota Hilux. Typically, these events end when one vehicle pulls the other across a designated point halfway between their starting positions.

Not this time – the poor Japanese pickup gets trailered (wrong-end-first, brakes fully locked) around the Detwiler proving grounds. You guessed it by now that, after snapping the driveline during the muscle-flexing round, the K20 got a whole new rear (and all other smashed parts) replaced. What’s the fun of destroying a perfectly straight, solid, repairable vehicle when you can pulverize it in stages, one bit at a time? Stay tuned, this square body torture isn't over just yet.