Know your lorry

How often things are checked

Who does it, and how often. The driver does the walkaround every day; the rest is the operator's job, but a driver who knows the dates spots the overdue one.

Walkaround check

Every day before the first journey, and when you change trailer. Yours, legally. See the full list on the walkaround page.

Annual test

Every lorry and every trailer goes through the annual test (the HGV MOT) once a year.

Safety inspections

At the intervals the operator promised on its operator licence, usually every few weeks, by a mechanic, with the sheet kept for 15 months.

Tachograph

A digital or smart tachograph is recalibrated at least every 2 years, and again after a repair, a new number plate or a change of tyre size. The plaque on the door pillar shows the date.

Tachograph downloads

The vehicle unit is downloaded at least every 90 days, the driver card at least every 28 days.

Tankers carrying dangerous goods

The tank has its own periodic and intermediate inspections, and an ADR vehicle has an approval certificate renewed with its annual test. Check the dates on the plate and the paperwork before you load.

Lifting equipment

Tail lifts, lorry cranes and anything that lifts people get a thorough examination by a competent person, usually every 6 months for tail lifts and anything lifting people, otherwise every 12.

Tyres

Part of every walkaround, and the commonest reason a vehicle is stopped.

Tread depth

At least 1mm on lorries, buses, coaches and trailers over 3.5 tonnes, in a continuous band across the middle three quarters of the tyre and all the way round. Cars need 1.6mm.

Age

Since 1 February 2021 a tyre more than 10 years old may not be used on the front steering axle of a lorry, bus or coach, or on any single wheel of a minibus. The date code on the sidewall has to be readable.

Damage

No deep cuts in the sidewall, no cord showing, nothing stuck between twin wheels, wheel nuts tight.

Your tachograph card, hours and penalties

The card, the rules and what happens when they are broken. The day to day detail of manual entries is on our tachograph page.

Start of the shift

Card in before you drive, the country entered at the start and end of the day, and a manual entry for any work done before the card went in, the walkaround included. Our tachograph page goes through it step by step.

The card is yours

Personal to you and only you. Carry it whenever you drive in scope, never lend it, report a lost or broken one to the DVLA quickly. An operator downloads it at least every 28 days.

Night time

Under the working time rules, night time is midnight to 4am for goods vehicle drivers and 1am to 5am for bus and coach drivers. Work any of it and your working time that day is limited to 10 hours in 24.

Overspeed

The tachograph records speed. A lorry's limiter is set at 56mph (90km/h), and overspeed events show up when the operator analyses the data.

Fixed penalties from the DVSA

Drivers' hours offences found at the roadside are fined on a graduated scale in four levels: £50, £100, £200 and £300, higher the further over you went (driving an hour or more past a limit costs more than going over by minutes). Serious or repeated offences go to court instead.

Infringements are graded and they stay

Every drivers' hours and tachograph infringement is classed as minor, serious, very serious or most serious (MI, SI, VSI, MSI). The DVSA keeps them on your record for four years.

DVSA points, in bands

When the DVSA finds an offence it is put in a band from 0 (least serious) to 5 (most serious) and the operator gets points for it, up to 300 for a band 5 offence. Those points make up the operator's compliance score (OCRS), green, amber or red, over a rolling three years. A red operator gets stopped far more often, and its drivers with it.

Points: on your licence, and at work

Drivers' hours offences do not put points on your driving licence; speeding, careless driving or a mobile phone do, and twelve points in three years means a ban. The card itself holds your activities, not points. But most operators score you from the tachograph data: the analysis software (TachoMaster's driver compliance score is one) gives points for every infringement, each level of points brings a procedure, from a talk to a warning to being taken off driving, sometimes for a fortnight, and a clean three months usually brings you down a level. Some adverts even say how many current points they accept. Ask to see the scheme, and keep your own printouts.

The DVSA can read you as you drive

Newer smart tachographs can be read remotely by an enforcement officer at the roadside or from a vehicle behind you, without stopping you. A clean card is the only defence.

Your vocational licence

On top of any fine, the Traffic Commissioner can call a driver to a conduct hearing and suspend or revoke the lorry or bus entitlement. That is the penalty that ends careers.

The operator's licence too

For an operator the Traffic Commissioner can cut the number of vehicles on the licence, suspend it or revoke it, and a transport manager can lose the good repute that lets them do the job. Firms have been left with one lorry out of four, or none.

Prison is real

Falsifying tachograph records or using a magnet or a second card is a criminal offence that can mean prison. Driving without your card in is an offence on its own, and when it is done to hide hours, over days and hundreds of miles, it is dealt with as the serious offence it is. Causing death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving, a bridge strike included, can mean prison too. Drivers are jailed for these every year.

Driving without a tachograph

Some work is outside the tachograph rules, for example certain exempt vehicles and uses. Then the GB domestic hours rules apply (10 hours driving and 11 hours on duty a day) and many drivers keep a written log book instead. The employer must tell you which rules your job is under.

Gearboxes

Adverts say auto, semi auto or manual. What they mean in the cab:

Manual

Clutch pedal and a gear lever, often with a splitter. Fewer every year in the UK, still common on older fleets, plant and some tippers.

Automated manual (semi automatic)

A manual gearbox changed by a computer, no clutch to press when driving. Most lorries sold in the UK now have one. Each maker has its own name for it.

Automatic

A torque converter gearbox, like a car automatic. Common on buses, refuse lorries and some specialist vehicles.

Why it matters

If you passed your test in an automatic, check what your licence says: a code 78 means automatic only. Say what you can drive on your application.

The makes you will drive

The lorries on UK roads, in alphabetical order. Every one feels different, and an advert that names the fleet tells you something.

DAF

Iveco

MAN

Mercedes-Benz

Renault Trucks

Scania

Volvo

Also seen

Ford Trucks, Isuzu and Fuso on lighter lorries, Dennis Eagle on refuse collection, and electric makers arriving every year.

Tractor units

The front half of an artic.

4x2

Two axles: one at the front, one driven at the back. Lighter, cheaper, for lighter loads.

6x2

Three axles, one driven. The extra axle is a mid lift (in front of the drive axle) or a tag (behind it), and it can usually lift off the road when empty.

6x4

Three axles, two driven. Heavy haulage, tippers, low loaders.

Fifth wheel height

The coupling plate. Many units can raise or lower it, or come in a low version, to pull the very tall double deck and high volume trailers British fleets use. Coupling the wrong height to the wrong trailer is how a trailer ends up on its legs.

Trailers

What is on the back, and what it means for you.

Curtainsider

Sliding curtains on the sides for loading by forklift. The most common trailer in the UK.

Box and fridge

Solid sides; a fridge has its own refrigeration unit to watch and log.

Single deck, tall single deck, double deck

One floor or two. Double deck trailers are among the tallest things on British roads: know the height to the inch.

Flatbed and step frame

Open trailers for steel, timber and machinery. Load securing and sometimes roping and sheeting are the job.

Coil carrier

A well in the floor for steel coils, often with a sheet on a sliding frame.

Skeletal

A frame for shipping containers, port work.

Low loader

Very low, for plant and machinery. Wide loads come with their own rules.

Heavy haulage and modular trailers

Extendable and modular trailers with many axles, sometimes a dozen or more, for the biggest loads: wind turbine blades, bridge sections, transformers, tram and train carriages, boats and small aircraft. Abnormal load rules, escorts and route planning come with every move.

Livestock trailers

Cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry, often on decks that move. The animals' welfare comes first, and the driver needs an animal transport certificate of competence on longer journeys.

Horseboxes

Lorries and trailers built to carry horses. The same care as livestock, and many are driven on C1 or C.

Bulk tippers and blowers

Animal feed, grain and powders, loaded from the top and blown or tipped out at the farm or the mill.

Tanker

Liquids, powders or gas, often ADR. Its own training and its own checks.

Tipper

The body lifts to unload stone, sand or waste.

Tandem and tri axle

Two or three axles on the trailer. Three is usual on a full size UK trailer.

Rear steer axle

On many trailers the last axle steers: a self steer follows the road, a command steer is turned by the unit. It lets a long trailer get round tight corners. Reversing one takes getting used to.

Longer semi-trailer (LST)

Legal for normal use since 31 May 2023: a trailer up to 15.65 metres, 18.55 metres overall, at least three axles with one that steers. About a metre longer than a standard trailer.

City and urban trailers

Short trailers, often with a steering axle, for store and forecourt deliveries in tight yards and town streets.

Wagon and drag (drawbar)

A rigid lorry pulling a separate trailer on a bar, common on parcel and retail work. The trailer is either a centre axle trailer on a fixed bar, or a full drawbar trailer whose front axle turns on a turntable. Needs C+E, and reversing one is a skill of its own.

Fuel

What goes in the tank now, and what is coming.

Diesel

Still most of the fleet: ordinary white diesel, taxed for the road.

Red diesel

Rebated, dyed red, for tractors, farm and some other off road use. Since 1 April 2022 most businesses may no longer use it, and that includes the fridge units on lorries and trailers, which used to run on it from their own tank. Red diesel in a road vehicle's tank means seizure and a heavy fine.

AdBlue

A fluid in its own blue capped tank that cleans the exhaust on modern diesels. Run out and the engine loses power. Never put it in the diesel tank.

HVO

A renewable diesel some fleets run instead of ordinary diesel. Same engine, same pump, different invoice.

Gas

Some supermarket and parcel fleets run lorries on gas, often biomethane, compressed or liquefied. Different filling, different safety drill: you are trained before you drive one.

Electric

Battery electric lorries, mostly on regular runs back to base where they charge. Quiet, quick, and the range is the planning question. Know where the high voltage cut off switch is.

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