[f. TRUCK v.1 and sb.1 + -ER1. Cf. F. troqueur (17th c.).]
1. One who trucks or barters; a barterer, bargainer; Sc. an itinerant dealer, a pedlar; † also, as a term of reproach: a haggler, huckster, trafficker (obs.).
1598. Florio, Barattiere,… a trucker, a marter, an exchanger.
1622. Mabbe, trans. Aleman’s Guzman d’Alf., II. 239. This silly foole was a kinde of trucker of commodities.
1632. Massinger, City Madam, III. i. I know them—swaggering, suburbian roarers, Sixpenny truckers.
1660. J. Lloyd, Prim. Episc., 31. The sacrilegious truckers, which would have the reverend Clergy live upon their leavings and scraps.
c. 1790. in Ramsay, Scot. in 18th C. (1888), II. xi. 323, note. Every year there came a set of troquers or trockhers (barterers, Fr. troquer) from Ireland with horse-loads of linen, which they bartered for the miner’s old clothes.
1802. Joanna Baillie, Ethwald, II. I. iii. Come on, base trokers of your country’s blood.
1816. Scott, Antiq., iii. Brokers and trokers, those miscellaneous dealers in things rare and curious.
2. U.S. One who grows ‘truck’ or garden produce for market; a truck-gardener or truck-farmer.
1868. Native Virginian, 7 Aug. 1/7. These statements are true, and we could give as many more such if we had time to go round and ask the truckers in this neighborhood.
1882. Philad. Even. Star, 2 May. Norfolk truckers are picking their strawberries.
1890. Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 10 April, 2/4. Southern vegetables are looking very well and the truckers are hopeful.
3. attrib., as trucker-fashion; also † trucker-cloth, ? cloth for trucking; cf. trucking-cloth.
1536. Somerset Medieval Wills (Som. Rec. Soc.), 34. To my brother Edward a Trucker cloth. Ibid. (1543), 75. To John Burges my prentice, a trucker cloth.
1881. A. Watt, in Mod. Scott. Poets, III. 137. In true troker fashion, she ca’d at ilk dwellin’.
