Roasting dash and dusty trail
Grime between my fingernails
Grip the wheel, heading west
Put my ways to the test

“I said I only grant passage to the best of the best”
Said the cross-eyed man with a gun to his chest
As I pulled the trigger I found the bullet wouldn’t lie
So I told him the tale of how I died

Used to be a salesman on the corner in the fray
Sellin’ miracle oil and potter’s clay
Met a cemetery owner, said he’d change my life
With a bucket o’ grease and a switchblade knife

The body and the soul is a steel machine
The living blood is the gasoline
Remember well the motto that day
We’re all gonna die, either way

Well, the knife came in handy and the grease was like candy
On a trek through the desert with a woman named Mandy
The sister of the man who proposed the ride
He said every man who’d tried had been burned alive

I threw her in the back of ma truck in a sack
With a double padlock and a little thumb tack
To hold the poster: “Alive or dead”
A hundred thousand dollars for a crazy lady’s head

At a gas station, I found she was gone
Found a gum wrapper with a little map drawn
“If you’ve got guts and a heart and a brain
“Bring a quart of gasoline and I’ll prove I’m sane”

The body and the soul is a steel machine
The living blood is the gasoline
Remember well the motto that day
We’re all gonna die, either way

With the moon up above and the wolves at my back
I blazed my way to the center of the map
A rusty, old mountain, metallic in the night
The wrinkles in her face shone in the firelight

I asked her why, but all she gave was a glare
With fire in her eyes and dust in her hair
She took a step up and took a quart of oil
Said a few words and poured it in the soil

The mountain came alive with a roar and a lurch
Now Mandy is my engine and the road is my church
You only grant passage to the best of the best?
You’re lookin’ at the truckers of the old west

The body and the soul is a steel machine
The living blood is the gasoline
Remember well the motto of tomorrow
All that’s gonna die is our pain and our sorrow

The cross-eyed man said “I thought you died”
Looked ‘em in the nose “Well, I guess I lied”
The gun wasn’t needed, “you passed the test”
“Welcome to the truckers of the old west”

The body and the soul is a steel machine
The living blood is the gasoline
Remember well the motto of tomorrow
All that’s gonna die is our pain and our sorrow