After Special Agent Michael Cates testifies against vicious drug lord Jacob Calder, he is put into the witness protection program under the name Chance Bowman as a trucker driving a state-of-the-art long-haul 18-wheeler.

An encounter at a truck stop embroils Chance Bowman in a young widow's problems and an altercation with the local police, much to the chagrin of his Department of Justice supervisor Burton Hardesty, who wants Chance and his huge, hi-tech Kenworth T2000 to remain undetected by an imprisoned drug lord.

A minor accident at a stock car racetrack delays Chance Bowman from moving on and introduces him to a talented mechanic with a tainted past.

After a near-miss encounter with Calder's top hit man, Chance decides that rather than keep running, he must stand and fight. To see just what Chance is up against, his associate Cie Baxter joins him in the field for what becomes a showdown, ""High Noon"" style, in the Ohio sun.

Now in the Pacific Northwest, Chance tries to play Good Samaritan to a con man who claims his wife has been kidnapped. But along with a lovely but inexperienced insurance investigator, he finds himself delivering the wife to the real kidnappers, and realizes that no one is who he or she really seems to be.

Chance becomes the reluctant guardian of a 12-year-old tomboy whose parents are using her as a pawn in a bitter divorce contest. At the same time, Chance rediscovers an old friend, a former Academy instructor, whose retirement has left him lonely and bitter.