Hell's Highway felt the pinch of censorship rather badly. Having suffered several cuts in the original run, it lost both artist and writer in quick succession when Action came back. Mike White was shunted off to Roaring Wheels for a few weeks before becoming the regular artist on Hellman. His replacement was Jim Eldridge, a Rogers Agency artist who could throw out pages pretty quickly. The speed showed in his style, which was poor, to say the least. Without White, Adrian became bored, and moved on to other things. As Hell's Highway would have wrapped up before too long, it's reasonable to assume a pre-ban finale had already been written, but failed to materialise. Instead, four of the surviving episodes were edited and run in the interim, whilst Eldridge worked on new material. Following Adrian's departure, another writer struggled on for a few months, then wrapped the whole thing up with Hartwell defecting to the Soviets with Steve and Danny on hot pursuit. Having seen off their crooked boss, the boys were given their freedom and their truck licences by Mayer, who had survived a bullet from Hartwell.

The final gasp of Hell's Highway, presented below, still carried the original edge of the story, but clumsy edits were made. Steve pushing a lighted cigarette into his captor's face was excised, as was any shoot-to-kill action. Crass dialogue such as "I'll scare him with a slug just over his head" and "I winged him" look out of place amongst the vehicular carnage on the page as the bodies mount. Heck!