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PSA: The semi truck jumping record now stands at 166 feet

There's something incredibly unsettling but undeniably thrilling about seeing a semi truck flying through the air. Given their massive weight and commercial purposes, these road-going leviathans really should remain firmly planted on the ground, which makes seeing them airborne so transfixing. Gregg Godfrey has yet again taken to the skies in a big rig to set a new record by leaping 166 feet across two mounds of dirt in a spectacular stunt.

For such an ungainly machine, the jump is actually beautiful to behold, and the truck simply makes a delicate arc through the air until the big rig crashes back to Earth on all of its wheels. Godfrey also released a short clip from inside the cab on Instagram (embedded below), and, as you might have expected, the stunt looked far more violent from that perspective. Godfrey got thrown around like a rag doll in there.

Godfrey was actually a previous record holder of this title, but he lost the crown last year when the Lotus F1 team and EMC Industries managed an 83-foot-7-inch leap over a car. The latest massive stunt should keep the honor in Godfrey's hands for quite a while, though. Amazingly, the goal was only to reach 140 feet for this jump, but apparently Godfrey was carrying enough speed to fly just a little further.

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