The M62 is a 107-mile-long (172 km) west–east trans-Pennine motorway in Northern England, connecting Liverpool and Hull via Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield; 7 miles (11 km) of the route is shared with the M60 orbital motorway around Manchester. The road is part of the unsigned Euroroutes E20 (Shannon to Saint Petersburg) and E22 (Holyhead to Ishim).

The motorway, which was first proposed in the 1930s, and conceived as two separate routes, was opened in stages between 1971 and 1976, with construction beginning at Pole Moor near Huddersfield and finishing at that time in Tarbock on the outskirts of Liverpool. The motorway absorbed the northern end of the Stretford-Eccles bypass, which was built between 1957 and 1960. Adjusted for inflation to 2007, its construction cost approximately £765 million. The motorway has an average daily traffic flow of 144,000 vehicles in West Yorkshire, and has several sections prone to traffic congestion, in particular, between Leeds and Huddersfield and the M60 section around Eccles. The M62 coach bombing of 1974 and the Great Heck rail crash of 2001 are the largest incidents to have occurred on the motorway.

Stott Hall Farm, situated between the carriageways on the Pennine section, has become one of the best-known sights on the motorway. The M62 has no junctions numbered 1, 2 or 3, or even an officially numbered 4, because it was intended to start in Liverpool proper, not in its outskirts.

Between Liverpool and Manchester, and east of Leeds, the terrain along which the road passes is relatively flat. Between Manchester and Leeds it traverses the Pennines and its foothills, rising to 1,221 feet (372 m) above sea level slightly east of junction 22 in Calderdale, not far from the boundary between Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire.

The motorway's origins are found in the 1930s, when the need for a route between Lancashire and Yorkshire had been agreed after discussion by their county highway authorities. At the same time, it was envisaged that a route between Liverpool and Hull was needed to connect the ports to industrial Yorkshire.

After the Second World War, the Minister of Transport appointed engineers to inspect road standards between the A580 East Lancashire Road in Swinton and the A1 road near Selby. The 1949 Road Plan for South Lancashire identified the need to upgrade the A580 to dual carriageway with grade separation and provide bypasses at Huyton and Cadishead. In 1952, the route for a trans-Pennine motorway, the Lancashire–Yorkshire Motorway, was laid down, with Ferrybridge at the eastern terminus rather than Selby. By the 1960s, the proposed A580 upgrade to dual carriageway was considered inadequate, and there was an urgent need to link Liverpool to the motorway network.

The route of the Lancashire-Yorkshire motorway was considered inadequate as it failed to cater for several industrial towns in Yorkshire. When James Drake visited the United States in 1962, his experience of the Interstate Highway System led him to conclude that the Merseyside Expressway, planned to run between Liverpool and the M6, would need to be extended to the Stretford-Eccles Bypass and beyond, to create a continuous motorway between Liverpool and Ferrybridge (a link between Ferrybridge and Hull was not considered until 1964). Initially the plans were unpopular and not supported by the Ministry of Transport, but the scheme was added to the Road Plan in 1963.

Formal planning began on Wednesday 12 July 1961, when Ernest Marples authorised the two surveyors of Lancashire and the West Riding – Sir James Drake of Lancashire and Stuart Maynard Lovell of the West Riding, to plan a 50-mile (80 km) motorway from Worsley, in Lancashire, to Ledsham (now the Selby Fork) in the West Riding. From either end, the plan was that there would be 'improved roads' from the eastern end, at the Selby Fork, eastwards to Hull, and 'improved roads' from the western end, at Worsley (now the Worsley Braided Interchange), westwards to Liverpool.