Trucker Cap History

we took this history lesson from the men who know them best - Ben Goorin and !Michael Koester 

Trucker Cap History

Hear it from the sources themselves - I asked !Michael to give us the glorious history of the Trucker cap and how Goorin was OG:

To understand The Farm present and future, it’s important to be aware of the 100 year foundation on which our core trucker shape really stands. Baseball caps have existed forever, and the name pretty much lets you know where they came from and how they were popularized. The Trucker version of a baseball shape came a lot later and, while the name “trucker” refers directly to its origin, that’s not the whole story. But let’s start there anyway.

The 5-panel baseball with mesh backs began as a promotional freebie for companies to give away to, you guessed it, truck drivers, basically giving away cheap, convenient headwear to be worn as a forehead billboard driving across America. It was during these initial stages, Goorin Bros. started manufacturing these caps for business all over. This snowballed quickly into an American icon. A baseball cap style that became synonymous with American grit and working-class culture, a blue collar and a trucker cap. And it was here that the first fashion leap began for an otherwise unassuming shape. Motorsports. The mechanics and engineers for high power motorsports and racing, of course, all wore truckers to do their work, even on race day. This is where the upper crust of society  took notice of the shape, the icon, and the underlying heartbeat of the trucker and adopted it themselves. As an anchor to the roots of the human experience, the push and the drive to survive in the untamed, unsafe world.

Right at the onset, Goorin was manufacturing truckers at breakneck rates to keep up with America’s newfound giveaway item. For years, the trucker was a staple of the Goorin product line in ever iteration. Mesh fronts, scrambled egg appliques on the bills, it was all added into the Goorin arsenal for trucker production. But it wasn’t until the late 90’s that THE FARM began to take shape.

As an ode to those early days celebrating the working culture underneath the trucker cap, Goorin planted the seeds of The Farm.  Five simple animal patches, all farm animals, were created and attached to a shape Goorin had perfected over the years with a true link to the origins of the shape. Not long after, just as before, society reacted by readopting the trucker cap as a status symbol but this time, as a fashion symbol as well.This is truly where Goorin’s animal trucker line became The Farm.

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