Why Trucking in the UK is More Difficult 

Road design in the UK is absolutely not influenced by manual cars. Using give way instead of stop signs and roundabouts reduces congestion and journey times, while improving journey times. Lower speeds increase safety, and reduce emissions and congestion.

As a Brit, our roads are a traumatic experience

It's hard because they're always driving on the wrong side of the road

"The overall feel of the UK's roads is one of order and patience" _Laughs in Mancunian Driver_

Great video, but you forgot to mention one of the main issues. Lack of layby-s or parking suitable for drivers to do their mandatory breaks in. For example a driver dropping goods in central London has to get in and back out before their 4.5h driving limit. Even in more rural areas, if you are not on a motorway then its very difficult to find somewhere as most places you are delivering to are not big enough to have you park for 45min without being in the way. Furthermore access to facilities such as showers and bathrooms is appalling. Most lay-bys are only big enough for 2 trucks, and usually just have a single overflowing rubbish bin. and not even all motorway services have showers.

When I just got my truck driving license back in Poland they just instantly sent me to work in UK as a truck driver. Learning to back up was like impossible like that. Especially by driving on the opposite side of the road.

You had me at 9 hours a day haha....🤣🤣🤣🤣 we can work a total duty time of 15 hrs 3 times in a week and then 13hrs there after with at least 45hours rest !!! the 9 hours relates to wheels turning i.e. drive time

I'm surprised you didn't mention Allely's, a truck company which transports entire standard gauge trains, sometimes in very tight neighbourhoods

it's cool how you point out the nature of driving and traffic flows in the uk, I've been driving in them for years but your description made me go "huh yeah, it is kinda like that isn't it."

Coming from the uk I can vouch it’s not actually hard to drive here. It’s your perception of what your use to. If your used to crossroads/intersections, turn right on red lights, straight roads etc then I can see how twisting country lanes are a cultural shock. Like with manual/stick shift, it’s just what your use to, larger cars tend to be automatic such as range rovers but smaller cars are more likely manual. As for driving on the left, if you can’t get the hang of that, many you shouldn’t be driving in a foreign country (like that diplomats wife).

Good video about us British lorry drivers. I'd just like to add to your points that we also have to take detours due to low bridges, which don't just exist in towns but on main routes as well, weak bridges and the main problem for any lorry driver that sleeps out over night, server lack of safe parking! There's only a handful of lorry parks in the country where you know you won't wake up in the morning with your curtains slashed or diesel stolen overnight.

As a French truck driver i will be very happy to help you on a potential french trucking episode because there's a lot to say

This video fails to mention points I was hoping to hear. As any European international trucker would tell you that UK trucking is awful because of the abysmal service you get at service stations (food, showers etc.), Overnight parking spaces are insufficient and if you don't stop there your tarp will be cut up and valuable cargo stolen 100% of the time. All this for the same wage as mainland That is why so many drivers left, Brexit was just the last straw.

as someone who has just learnt to a drive a truck in london. yeah, it's tight and twisty, no huge 4 lane city highways here.

I'm from America and have driven in the UK and Ireland several times. Some things that shocked me were, as you say, the closeness of items along the roadside. In particular, there was the omnipresent HEDGE that felt like it was going to reach out and grab you. Things I liked were the roundabouts, yields, and 'notional roundabouts' (basically a 4-way yield) in places where we would have a stop that most people ignore anyways. I also liked the 3 lane roads with a central passing lane that operated for either side at different points and 1 lane roads that had pull-offs every quarter mile or so to let traffic from the other direction pass. (Of course, that only works if you have long sightlines, such as up in treeless Orkney.) One thing that does bug me about roundabouts is the way that so many American transportation enthusiasts seem to think that they're an all-purpose panacea. Compared to a signaled or signed intersection, they require far more space. For them to be able to keep traffic flowing efficiently on a fast, high capacity road, you need to be able to see the traffic in the circle that you will be merging into from a good distance off. This often isn't possible due to geography or the built environment. They are also less than ideal for a small road crossing a large, heavily-trafficked one. Good luck pulling out when there's a car coming every two seconds!

I love watching your videos when I get to work! It's always the highlight of my morning.

Hi Yukon, could you do a video on the different types of fire trucks (I.e. engines, brush trucks [type 1-7], aerial ladders, tillers, ARFFs, quints, tenders, heavy rescues, HAZMAT, etc.) and the history of the modern day fire truck?

Keep it up and for a Truck driver in the UK they are called Lorry Driver. For the common gearbox on a UK lorry are the Automated Manual type. They are speed limited to 56 mph (90 kmh) remember UK does direct conversion of kmh speed limits to MPH

Keep it up, I love these videos

Great video as always!

Yukon is the type of youtuber you don't expect to be interested in but you are. Good videos

It makes me so happy to see him upload a new video. It doesn’t matter what he talking about it’s alway good

Early club!!!! Love these videos keep them coming

You should do a video on South African trucking and the safety problems they face.

With everything going on right now, the best decision to be on any creative man's heart is having a profitable investment strategy.

Watching from Swansea, appreciate the shoutout

As a UK truck ( lorry ) driver it's nice to be appreciated. Speed limits are 56mph and different parts of the Uk are more respectful of the difficulties we have in manoeuvres. London being a different animal . Brexit has reduced the demand for goods overall and therefore the need for transportation so the vacancies have dried up .

Hey just a note to other UK drivers, as Yukon says truck drivers are under appreciated, so when you come to a round about remember they need both lanes to get around them, so when you see them going in to the outside lane, don't be a dick and scoot round them on the inside, stop, give them a wee flash of your lights so they know you've seen them and let them get on with it.

Amazing video!! would love to see you do a video about landfill vehicles and trucks as they have some incredibly interesting vehicles.

Would love to see a video about Finnish trucking, as it is my home country. Great content btw!

Hi just wanted to point out when you mentioned better hours, the 9 hours is the standard daily driving hours not working hours. In the UK a driver can drive 10 hours twice a week, and work 15 hours 3 times a week (minimum 9 hours uninterrupted rest in a 24 hour period). However that can be circumvented all week if the driver takes a uninterrupted 3 hour break within the 15 hours work period (3 hours + 9 hours =12 hours rest in a 24 hour period). Making a 6 day 90 hour week possible.

3:32 in the video is a map where Rugby is in the middle. I always get very excited when I see my hometown is in a youtube video.

This video reminded me of one thing I noticed when playing Euro Truck Simulator 2, which features much of Europe including the UK. The UK roads, or rather most of the roads, all feel very wide and easy to drive on with signage and rules that I was able to get up to speed with as a driver in the US. I was wondering to myself "wait, isn't the roads in this inner city area supposed to be tight and curvy"? Even with that nitpick, Euro and American Truck Simulator does a great job at simulating the basic trucker experience for non-truckers. Good and snappy video as always.

Good one as always! I'd be interested in hearing more about African countries. Tell me about trucking in Nigeria or Botswana. Turkey could also be interesting

😂 got me when you said the average trucker works 9 hours a day, I've never had a shift so short

Been loving this series of videos. I recommend checking out Dutch trucking. They have some of the nicest trucks in Europe. Finnish trucking would also make an interesting video as they have the longest trucks in Europe with HCT single and double trailers. Edited to fix a few mistakes I missed.

Exactly yesterday I was wondering about when you'd done a video about trucking in UK. Said and done, I woke up and found this

I adore your videos is there any way you could make longer content.

One other way to help with last-mile is the use of smaller trucks, I live above a row of non-chain shops in a large city, and can't remember the last time I saw them being served by an artic rather than a C1 class truck (rigid

wow I really caught this fast! Maybe you should do a bit on the Dalton-Elliot Highway in Alaska? Maybe make it a recurring bit on more famous/dangerous trucking routes?

love your videos! could you make a video about chilean trucking?

It would be pretty cool if you talked about trucking in Iran or Türkiye. I think it would be interesting to see how they deal with the tough terrain.

It would be great to do a video covering Dutch trucking. Their trucking culture is spectacular. You should cover "Holland Style" design of truck customizing, which has even influenced other European countries.

Hello Yukon, nice video! I think a nice video can be trucking in Chile (my country) have a nice day!

Could you please do a video on New Zealand trucking? We have every brand with both conventional and cab over! and beautiful roads!

What a lovely little video. Our lorry drivers (truckers) don't get the credit they deserve. It's not really seen as a skilled job/career here really, even though it's quite difficult to get all of your heavy goods licenses etc.

Hi @Yukon i was wondering if you could do the dutch way of trucking next it would be so so great if you do this so please do it😊❤

Would love to see a video on the Icelandic trucking, as it's a pretty remote island with many of it's inland routes going straight through rivers and being little more than a gravel path 😁

I do agency truck driving in the UK and occasionally in Europe (I have a family so can't be away for too long) I can honestly say that driving in Europe is 100 times better than driving in the UK. The truck stops are FREE to park in overnight (the UK charge £30 a night), trucks stops in Europe have washing machines for the drivers, dryers to dry clothes and cafes selling nutritious food. The UK service stations don't and only sell unhealthy fast food such as mcdonald's KFC and Burger King, the showers are also rarely cleaned in the uk and you need a tetanus shot before entering. Roads are less crowded in Europe, car drivers too have a better standard of driving in Europe (less tailgating and no middle lane hogging). Honestly Lane hogging is exclusively a UK thing.

Another reason or reasons are, you have to pay for park at truck stops and security is not guaranteed, you get diesel stolen, also your curtain sides get cut open and goods stolen,

As a resident of Leicester thank you for showing our city satellite! (first image)

Just when I thought the day couldn't get any better!

As a truck driver in the uk 🇬🇧 I can honestly say I love driving down a road where there's ¼ of an inch at either side and knowing I have the skill to get a truck that's bigger than a house in to a place that wasn't built for it .... I wish youtube would allow pictures in the comments as a lot of non uk residents would be amazed

Hello Yukon, Big fan from Saudi Arabia. Can you do a video about Jordanian truckers, they frequent the roads in my country so it would be cool to see you talking about how they live, the difficulties they face (like rising fuel prices) and also talk about their frequent round trips to the Kingdom and navigating it's desert roads. Thanks a lot, Love your videos

Would love to see one of these for Colombia! Columbia is a super unique nation when it comes to trucking. Most of the major cities are in the Andes and the roads are typically super narrow and steep, I would love to learn more about the truckers there!

Maybe you could do a video about scandinavian/norwegian trucking where they have to go through some of the tightest roads :)

Coming from UK this is interesting, two minor mistakes. Speed limit is 60 but trucks are limited to 56mph. I average 12 hours a day, your allowed to work up to 15 drive for 10 hours.

"an undying affinity for manual transmissions" Honestly same

You should make a video about the danish truckstyling and stuff

I'm not a trucker in the UK, I'm a coach driver facing a lot of what the lorry drivers see on a daily basis too, the speed limit for trucks in the UK is 90kph (56mph) whereas In a coach I am limited to 100kph (62mph) driving a coach is (dare I say this) similar to long wheel base cabover "rigid" lorries (no trailer) we coach drivers don't bend In the middle and struggle around a lot of tight corners, great video Yukon 😊

Drive for 9 hours a day with no period exceeding 4.5 hours, take a 45 minute break to reset your time, but can work upto 15 hours in a single day, theres more too it than that but that's a brief description

Wow, uk roads are more daunting compared to American and Canadian roads? I think the other way round. The road design in UK forces drivers to go slow and pay attention. In America, it's all too common to see drivers going well above the speed limit and distracted because the wide roads give the illusion of safety, but with higher speeds and distracted drivers, they're actually far more dangerous.

01:58 'order and patience' nearly pissed meself laughing there

hey Yukon, I would love to see a video about Eastern European trucking, especially in the Balkans for example

At 3:25 I would say the comparison may be a bit unfair as this distance is quite high. One of the towns on the far right of the map is Kettering, Northamptonshire and it takes over an hour to get to the large city, Birmingham, on the motorway network.

I know that street at 2:12! Got the KOM on Strava by bicycle up there.

Traffic flowing in the UK?!! Not in the bigger cities. The M25, the orbital motorway around London, is dubbed 'The National Car Park'. Driving in central London used to be bad enough. Since the Congestion Charge has been implemented, where you have to pay to drive within the ring road (unless you're on a motorbike or low emissions car), the money collected has been used to change the road layout in a way that causes more congestion, so they can justify the charge in the first place and line their pockets on top, instead of improving the flow of traffic and effectively reduce pollution. The less time you spend idling in traffic, the better. You won't see me do multi-drop driving, especially not in city centres anymore, especially, with nowhere to park a lorry for your delivery, and cameras everywhere, when you risk more in fines than you earn in a day. No wonder there's a driver shortage!

Truckers in the UK actually work 15 hours a day. We can only drive 9 hours a day, or 10 hours twice a week. The rest of the time is spent on other work, loading, etc to make up 15 hours per day.

03:54 - Oh a disastrous thing that occured to us! 🤦🏻‍♂️😕

the main problem in uk, there are few truck parking spot with services for truckers.

I'd argue that the vast majority of roads in the UK have been built much later than than the invention of the car - usually only town/city centres are very old.

How about something regarding trucking on smaller islands such as Jamaica, Cyprus, Madeira, Cabo Verde...? That'd be really interesting. Despite their sizes, some of these islands have a pretty large population.

I think you should have mentioned the UK's excessive vehicle heights. Coming from Germany, where the trailers never exceed the height of the cab, I was astounded to see trucks with trailers either continuously around 0.5-1 metre taller than the cab, or sloping up towards the centre and then down again. Height clearances on roads are far more relaxed in the UK compared to mainland Europe.

great video :) do one about mexican trucking next if possible

Yukon you are the GOAT

you should research different types of intersections. different US states have different preferences as well as other countries. in my state i've only seen one diverging diamond intersection but in minnesota i see them all the time. seems up your alley

Could you do a video about Holland/Sweden style Trucking.

I love your videos. Thanks for making them. Especially the ones about historical trucking are super interesting

Lorry drivers in the UK often, unfairly I think (especially when you look at the bigger picture) get blamed for accidents or incidents that are not their fault, some by the courts...others by people on social media. Example, lorry was turning left and a cyclist cycled down the inside (this was in London) and got killed. It was the cyclists fault however there were a lot of comments attacking the driver online. I can't remember the conclusion the courts came to.

Hey mate I know you have already done a video on Australian truckies but could you do a more in-depth video on out back Queensland truckies. Thanks very much if you even read this.

This coming out 1 week before my Class 1 training feels oddly convenient 😂

Hey Yukon, It's nice to hear you once lived here in Wales, which part of Wales did you live ? P.S Loving the trucking vids keep it up butt.

The maximum speed a truck can travel in the UK is 90 Km/h (56mph). Also, a lot of truck drivers will work up to 15 hours in a day - as they are often paid by the hour a 9 hour day isn't going to pay very well.

Europe in general seems hard for truck drivers. It's so tight and small. I know this isn't the same, but I noticed this heavily in Euro Truck Sim 2.

1:32 Whilst yield (we call them “Give Way” signs) are much more common, some Stop signs do exist. They’re mainly at the more dangerous junctions.

The most important benefit of roundabouts is safety and reduced emissions because of hardly ever being stationary and idling. Watch a few of the USA "Bad Driving" videos to see how many accidents occur at huge traffic signal junctions with people running red lights.

I'd love to know more about your experience with Wales

something you could do is cover the history of certain trucking companies, though it might go stale somewhat fast

Please do Sweden, we have some very large and heavy trucks here.

i always enjoy your content, and i really appreciated your first hand experience in this one. no topic suggestion, but i’d love it if you included more information about licensure requirements and trucking regulations in future videos-your brief mention of brexit complications made me want to learn more. cheers!

Could you do a rail logistics episode? Maybe woth a focus on freight since passenger rail is nonexistent in the US and freight rail is severely taken for granted.

I remember how hard it is to drive a double trailer in UK when playing Euro truck simulator 2. Especially going over all the intersections. Can’t imagine how they do it irl

Hi yukon, love your videos, can you do a video on Moroccan trucking

3:00 the legal limit is 97 km/h, but all modern european truck limit its speed to just 90 km/h

Definitely needed to mention the appalling overpriced parking situation Its a major bugbear here.

Hey bro could you do a video about Serbian trucking in Serbia there are many restaurants next to roads so if we are hungry we look at which one has most trucks parked at it since they always know which has best food

I'd be curious to see a video about trucking in France, although Im not sure if there's really anything interesting or special about it

I’ve been a truck driver in the U.K. for 22 years, truckers can drive 9hrs and do additional work, we can work up to 15hrs, but average around 13 per day, we do 2500 miles a week and can reverse a mountain into a mole hill.

I think you should make a video about jordanian trucking… it mostly consists of european truck I see a lot of the Mercedes Actros and in city they use Japanese mini trucks and european rigid trucks and for few companies (manaseer) they use the big ol American trucks like the kenworth t800

I used to work at a company with a former Fire-Fighter as my Driver. He could make a dusty old, overburdened, massively extended (by about 2ft iirc and another ft higher) Ford Transit *dance*. Trucking in Nigeria maybe?