The series featured universally masculine, working class male actors engaging in various sexual activities with each other, a notable divergence from the usual masculine/feminine partner roles found in earlier gay porn.
Dialogue focuses on Locke consoling Boyd over his sexual frustration due to his distance from his girlfriend, until the two leads engage in a three way orgy with another man at the end.
[3] Male friendship, as experienced by the characters of Locke and Fred Halsted, serves as the core of the El Paso Wrecking Corp.
[4] In LA Tool & Die, Gage explored more serious themes, including grief, the war in Vietnam (via a death scene flashback), and settling down.
[6] The Working Man Trilogy became the biggest selling gay porn film series of the pre-condom era.
"[7] Stallion critic Jerry Douglas commented that the trilogy "introduced a new sort of hero to the gay film, and celebrated the freedom of the sexual revolution that had spread across America during the years that they were being made.
"[5] The series broke new ground in its emphasis on exclusively rugged men and masculinity, as opposed to the man-woman gender roles replicated in male-male porn videos prior to Kansas City Trucking Co.
[1] Filmmaker Wash West cites Kansas City Trucking Co as one of his biggest influences: “If you look back at the early days in the 1970s during the ‘golden age’ of porn, people were really interested in making ‘films.’ For example, Kansas City Trucking Company (1976) and LA Plays Itself (1972) were the work of real filmmakers—well-constructed, beautifully shot, visually experimental, and sexy....