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Answer: We believe the sentence is effectively completed this way:

“The creeping Isuzu truck, its bed overflowing with scruffy, shirtless men in pajamas, shuddered to a stop in the plaza and disgorged its load like a dog shaking off fleas.”

Those five words enhance the sentence by using a simile that stays in character with the foregoing elements in the sentence. Saying the truck appeared to empty itself of its human payload by shaking itself free of them completes the image of a “creeping” vehicle that is host to some “scruffy” riders. The truck crept, as an old dog might, into the plaza, and rid itself of its human vermin as it “shuddered” to a stop. When metaphors and similes and other figures of speech are used sparingly in academic papers, it is important that they not be awkwardly mixed. To do so is to weaken both the idea contained in a sentence and the sentence itself.
這五個字的比喻特性和句子前半部一致，卡車「抖落」裝載的乘客，符合句子前半描寫：一輛 “creeping”（慢步行進）的卡車載著 “scruffy”（邋遢）的乘客，卡車蹣跚前進，就像隻老狗，開進廣場，“shuddered” （搖晃晃）停下來，就像趕寄生蟲一樣，讓乘客下車。學術論文裡可以適度使用比喻與其他修辭方法，但使用時必須小心，以免句子涵義表達不清楚，句子本身也不高明。