On July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa and his longtime friend Bobby Ciaro are impatiently waiting in the parking lot of a roadhouse diner. Moving in vignettes from when he was an International Brotherhood of Teamsters union organizer working the various trucking firms and laundries around Detroit, Hoffa's life over the four preceding decades gradually unfolds. In 1935, Hoffa boards a parked truck where he meets driver Bobby Ciaro. Hoffa pitches the benefits of joining the Teamsters and gives Ciaro a business card, on which he has written: "Give this man whatever he needs." A few days later, Ciaro reports to work to find Hoffa attempting to persuade his fellow drivers to unionize. Hoffa blurts out that he already spoke to Ciaro, getting him fired. He later accosts Hoffa with a knife, but Hoffa's longtime bodyguard Billy Flynn forces him to drop it at gunpoint. Ciaro assists Hoffa and Flynn in the arson of a laundry whose owner refuses to cooperate with the Teamsters. Flynn accidentally sets himself on fire and dies of his injuries. Ciaro then becomes Hoffa's new bodyguard and assistant.