A 16-year-old boy from Nevada in the US is on track to break the record of the most retweeted tweet, for a quest to get a year of free chicken nuggets.

With 3.3 million retweets, the most retweeted record holder right now is talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, which is a group selfie taken by Bradly Cooper at the Oscars award show in 2014.

As of Tuesday, Carter Wilkerson's plea has 2.6 million retweets, less than one million away to break that record.

Wilkerson last Wednesday tweeted at Wendy's, a fast-food chain store and asked them how many retweets were needed for a year of free chicken nuggets.

Wendy's replied with "18 million". Wilkerson replied "Consider it done" and posted the screenshot of this conversation with "Help me please, a man needs his nuggs" to ask for retweets.

"I sent out the tweet as a joke," Wilkerson told the Reno Gazette-Journal, "but then they responded with the outrageous number... Then I put the screenshot up and it started gaining momentum."

As his plea is going viral, Google, Amazon, United Airlines, and many other companies have joined Wilkerson's quest for chicken nuggets and retweeted his post.

Wilkerson's father suggested that at this point, "it's great if it has a great cause other than eating chicken nuggets for a year."

Wilkerson has taken his father's suggestion and set up a website, where he is planning to sell #NuggsforCarter T-shirts.

The proceeds will be donated to help families of Breast Cancer Patients, an educational scholarship, and to a local breast cancer non-profit organisation called Mom's on the Run, according to the website.