A trucking shot is a lateral camera movement in which the camera travels sideways - left or right - while maintaining a consistent angle and distance to the subject. The camera moves parallel to the action rather than toward, away from, or rotating around it, creating a sweeping horizontal traversal of space that is distinct from both the pan, which rotates on a fixed axis, and the push in or pull back, which moves forward or backward.

The trucking shot is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms lateral tracking or crab shot, all referring to this sideways camera travel. In practice it is achieved using a dolly on a track laid perpendicular to the camera's viewing direction, a camera car moving parallel to the subject, or a camera operator moving sideways while keeping their framing stable. The technique is particularly effective for revealing environments progressively as the camera sweeps across them, following subjects moving parallel to the camera's path, creating dynamic establishing shots of long architectural facades or natural formations, or producing a sense of continuous spatial survey. The movement has a distinctly different quality from a pan - because the camera physically moves through space, the parallax effect between near and far elements creates a sense of genuine dimensional depth that a rotating pan cannot replicate.

When prompting AI video generation for a trucking or crab shot movement, language like "camera moves laterally left," "sideways tracking movement across the scene," or "camera trucks right revealing the environment" communicates this specific horizontal travel. Describing elements at different depths in the scene helps reinforce the parallax depth that makes trucking shots visually compelling.