Jargon Buster

Do you know your artic from your ADR?  Your semi-low from your STGO?  Every industry has their fair share of jargon or commonly used words and terms and the haulage industry is no different.  Check out our jargon buster below and you’ll be talking like a trucker in no time!

ADR - This is the acronym for the European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road.  This needs a specialist licence for the driver carrying the goods and the haulage company

Artic - Short for an articulated lorry.  This is the combination of a tractor unit and trailer. 

Artic Hiab - This is an articulated lorry with a Hiab crane behind the cab. 

Backload - a job which has been arranged to fill the truck on it’s way back towards base/depot/home. 

Curtain Sider - This can be a rigid or articulated truck where the load is covered with a roof and curtains on either side to protect the load from the elements.

Front mount - A rigid Hiab where the crane is at the front of the vehicle (just behind the cab)

Flat bed - A truck with trailer or rigid trailer (ie. no crane as part of the vehicle)

Hammar - A specialist container lift which allows the loading, off-loading and transportation of 20’/30’/40’ containers weighing up to 35 tonnes.

HGV / LGV - Heavy Goods Vehicle and Large Goods Vehicle

Hiab - A brand name commonly used in the haulage industry to refer to a lorry mounted crane

Rigid - This refers to a truck/vehicle where the tractor unit and trailer are one, rigid structure.  Rather than an articulated truck/vehicle where it is made up of two separate parts.

Rear mount - A rigid Hiab where the crane is at the rear of the vehicle

Sprinter - A large van used for smaller loads, as an escort vehicle and repair jobs.

STGO - you may see these letters displayed on the front of a truck and can include STGO cat 1, cat 2 and cat 3.  This stands for Special Types General Order and relates to the weight category a vehicle can carry.

Tachograph - A device fitted to commercial vehicles which tracks time, speed, distance and driver activity. Professional drivers can only drive for a set amount of time per day and per week and tacographs allow this to be tracked.

Low Loader - A trailer with a low floor and no sides to allow the movement of wide or high loads. Often used for abnormal loads and an escort vehicle.

Semi-Low - A trailer with a low floor (not as low as a low loader) which is often used to carry wide, high or long loads.

Wagon & drag - Usually a rigid truck which is also pulling an additional trailer

Work to instruction - The hire of a truck (normally a Hiab) to work on site moving items around site at the customer’s instruction. This often doesn’t involve delivering or picking anything up from site, just working on site ‘to instruction’.