The truck industry is broad and there are tonnes of terms that may not be obvious at first sight. If you are struggling with what a term means, here is the place to look. On these truck glossary pages, you will find a simple introduction to the term and links to the relevant pages on this site or others.

Body Types

Truck Pages splits the types of commercial vehicle into three main categories: rigid trucks, tractor units and trailers. A rigid truck does not flex (articulate) and has the body sitting on top of it. A tractor unit has to connect to a semi-trailer for them both to work effectively.

• Tractor Units – can work across a wide weight range from 12 tonnes GTW to 200 tonnes (see weights and measures below)
  • Heavy Haulage – Any truck over 44 tonnes gross train weight in the UK is classed as a heavy haulage truck. These can go up to 200 tonnes and are subject to specialist rules and regulations. Click on the heavy haulage link for more information about these rules.
  • Pet Regs – (Petroleum regulations or ADR) To be able to carry flammable liquids, a truck has to have certain changes made to the electrical system and exhausts. This is to avoid a heat source near the load and any sparking that could take place causing a fire.
  • Urban Tractor Units –  Smaller trucks that would usually be sold as a rigid are reconfigured to work as a tractor unit for inner-city operations. They have great load spaces than a rigid truck but a much smaller footprint than a normal tractor unit.
• Rigid Trucks & Trailers

Available from 6 tonnes (anything lighter is a light commercial vehicle, after all) up to 32 tonnes GVW for a four-axle truck (40 tonnes for a drawbar ‘wagon and drag’ operation). We summarize the main body types below. Click on the names to find out more and to view the relevant trucks for sale. View a list of all truck body types for sale.

• Beavertail – Where the rear of a flatbed truck points down to the floor to which ramps can be attached to ease the loading of plant machinery and other vehicles.
  • Box – Exactly what is says; used for transporting dry goods, often with a tail lift to facilitate loading. Box trucks are often bespoke made so check the dimensions fully to make sure your load will fit inside through the door apertures, and it will go under local bridges. They are not all made from the same materials so check the weight too.
  • Brick Carrier – a crane truck fitted with a brick grab attachment. Usually comes with high dropsides. Crane may be mid-or rear-mounted.
  • Car Transporter – No surprises here, often the larger transporters are a drawbar set up to maximise the number of cars that can be loaded. We include smaller, single car transporters here, assuming they are not specialist recovery trucks.
  • Chassis Cab – The bare bones – a working truck but with nothing on the chassis ready to have a body fitted. These are found when the body had been damaged or is valuable and is being kept for a new chassis cab to go underneath.
  • Crane – See the crane section below for more details and click to view crane trucks for sale. These are used by builders merchants for deliveries, moving heavy machinery, loading heavy items into tall buildings, you name it. These are normal trucks fitted with cranes, not the specialist mobile cranes, you will find those on Plant Pages.
  • Curtainsider – Looks like a box truck, but the sides are made of strong curtains that can be rolled back to make forklift loading much easier. These have replaced flatbed trucks and roping and sheeting over the years.
  • Dropside – A flatbed truck with low sides that keep the load in place but can be easily released to swing to ‘drop’ down to access the load via a fork lift.
  • Grab Loader – A tipper truck that also has a crane at the front with a grab attachment. This means the vehicle can collect roadworks debris, for example, without the need for additional machinery like an excavator or wheel loader. It can then tip the load itself when back at the tip/base.
  • Hookloader – A large hook pulls on / pushes off a demountable body. Often used in waste management, the hookloader is nonetheless versatile and can be used for seasonal operations such as gritting in the winter and waste in the Summer.
  • Military – If it’s come from the army, then it’s in this category. Lots of 4×4 and 6×6 specialist trucks. Loved for export to countries where the roads are less than perfect. Able to cover any terrain and rescue other vehicles that are stuck!
  • Recovery – from a small car recovery truck perhaps with a rear spectacle (Spec) lift or a tilt and sled body to a large wrecker that is able to recover large trucks and buses.
  • Refrigerated – A box truck that has insulated sides, roof and doors plus a high powered air conditioning unit for the body so it can be run as a fridge or freezer. Often with multiple compartments kept at different temperatures.
    • Stand By – When a fridge or freezer truck is away from base and needs to park overnight, it can be plugged into the mains to chill the load which avoids the noisy diesel motor running all night.
  • Refuse – It’s a rubbish truck (or dust cart, RCV, garbage truck etc. etc.) These will be 18 or 26 tonnes with a waste compactor fitted at the rear. Some fitted with lifts for domestic bins, others with larger trade bin lifts. Most popular brands are Dennis Eagle with their Elite and Mercedes with their Econic model.
  • Skip Loader – Used in the waste industry, the ‘skip’ is left at a customer’s site where it is filled with waste and the skip loader returns later to take the loaded skip away. One lorry can manage tens of skips a day. Operated hydraulically using chains.
  • Road Sweeper – A truck that has been adapted as a road sweeper. These are specialist and occasionally left had drive for a better view when sweeping.  (not one of the compact versions – again head over to Plant Pages for a compact road sweeper)
  • Fuel Tankers – Rigid trucks a nd trailers that have been specially designedto carry fuel in a series of compartments (pots) to help carry differing grades of fuel and to stop the fuel splashing around and making the tanker unstable.
  • Tipper – from a 7.5 tonne domestic builder’s tipping truck to a 32 tonne rigid or 40ft tipping trailer. These are made from a variety of materials – in the tipping business payload is king so a lighter body is desired, but these trucks also take a bashing, so they have to be strong too. This is the trade off, so investigate the truck thoroughly when buying a used tipper.
• Specialist Trailer Bodies
  • Extendable – For heavy haulage operation. When the load is too long for the trailer, it can be extended to up to twice the length.
• • Low Loader – Uses a step frame and small rear wheels to minimise the loading height for transporting machinery and plant. Usually fitted with a winch to load the trailer.
• • Skeletal – a trailer with no body, but fitted with twist locks so a shipping container can be loaded onto it and locked into place. Available for one 20ft container or a 40ft model can take two 20ft containers or one 40ft. Often sold in stacks for the overseas export market.
  • Walking Floor – Has the same effect as a tipper truck by emptying the truck itself from the rear, but is safer in operation as the body is not lifted, but the floor moves to push the load out of the rear.

Truck Weights & Measures

• Unladen Weight – (ULW)The total weight of the vehicle, driver and body prior to any load being added
• Gross Vehicle Weight – (GVW) The total maximum permissible weight of the truck when loaded. This usually applies to rigid trucks alone – the GVW of a 6×2 tractor unit is 26 tonnes but it has a GTW (see below) of 44 tonnes when paired with a tri-axle semi-trailer
• Gross Train Weight – Maximum permissible combined weight of tractor unit, semi-trailer and load.
• Payload – the amount a truck can legally carry (GVW less ULW for a rigid truck)

Axle Configurations

Click on each configuration for more detail on the benefits of each configuration plus listings of the axle type trucks for sale.

• 4×2 – 4 points of contact (tyres) with the road, two of these driven by engine (2 axles)
• 4×4 – 4 points of contact (tyres) with the road, all of these driven by engine (usually ex-military or highly specialist trucks only) (2 axles)
• 6×2 – 6 points of contact (tyres) with the road, two of these driven by engine (either 26 tonne rigid or 44 tone tractor unit) (3 axles)
• 6×4 – 6 points of contact (tyres) with the road, four of these driven by engine (3 axles)
• 8×2 – 8 points of contact (tyres) with the road, two of these driven by engine (4 axles)
• 8×4 – 8 points of contact (tyres) with the road, four of these driven by engine (4 axles)
• Mid Lift – This is where the one axle can be lifted from the ground when not in use, saving on wear and tear. When the truck is loaded, the axle can be lowered. The axle is located in the centre of the truck with the driven axle behind. This takes up room in the chassis that could otherwise be used for other ancillaries such as batteries or larger fuel tanks.
• Rear Lift – The lifting axle is at the rear of the truck behind the drive axles. This gives more room for chassis items and tends to be seen more on a heavy haulage operation than every day 44 tonne tractor units where mid lift configuration is more common.
• Tridem – where there are four axles on a truck, there have traditionally been two sets of steer axles at the front and two sets of axles at the rear (both driving for a 8×4 or just one set driving for an 8×2). A tridem is a relatively recent addition, where there is just one steer axle at the front and three axles grouped at the rear, usually with the rearmost axle providing rear steering.
• Drawbar Spec – When a 4×2 or 6×2 rigid is fitted with a more powerful engine than usual PLUS a rear coupling and electrics to tow a drawbar trailer. Very popular in continental Europe, but less so in the UK where tractor units are able to operate at higher 44 tonne gross vehicle weights.
• Double Drive – This is a set of two axles located next to each other, both of which taking power from the engine to drive the truck (seen usually on 6×4 and 8×4 configurations above).
• Hub Reduction – Seen usually on heavy haulage operation, there is additional gearing in the wheel hubs themselves (they look much larger than a typical truck’s wheel hub). The planetary gears inside share the torque and workload which makes the whole axle much stronger. They are heavier so should only be used when necessary.

Truck & Trailer Ancillaries

• Tipping Gear -Where a tractor unit is towing a tipping or walking floor trailer, the trailer must be powered. For this, the tractor unit is equipped with a hydraulic system to plug into the trailer to operate the tipping rams or walking floor system.
• Easy Sheet – A generic term for a system that pulls a cover over a loaded body (usually a tipper or hookloader body). This prevents the contents from flying out of the truck when moving along. Can be rapidly deployed compared to roping and sheeting the load.
• Barn Doors – Located at the rear of a box or curtainside body, barn doors are a set of double doors that are locked one over the other with twisting bars running top to bottom of each door.
• Roller Shutters – Located at the rear of a box or curtainside body (sometimes at the side too) the roller shutter is similar in operation to a security shutter on a shop doorway. Usually manually operated, these types of door are quick to operate but more prone to damage when reversing than a solid barn door.
• Sliding 5^th wheel – The fifth wheel is the coupling between the tractor unit and the semi-trailer. A fifth wheel that can slide gives the operator additional flexibility regarding trailer length and loading across the axles.
• Night Heater – Historically run on diesel from the tank is a small heater that keeps the truck cab warm at night without having to run the trucks engine wasting fuel. Increasingly there are battery-powered heaters and coolers that will replace these diesel units over time.
• PTO (Power take off) – a generic outlet from the truck’s driveline that enables additional items to be powered (see also ‘tipping gear’ above).  These are typically cranes and lifts, but could power a demount system or any other devices required for a truck’s duty cycle.
• Air Kit – Also seen advertised as a ‘Full Air Kit’ this is the roof top fairing above the cab that streamlines the air before it hits the vertical plane of the body or trailer. Used when the cab is shorter than the body or trailers. Additional fairing s are available to go behind the cab to ‘close the gap’ between cab and body plus along the side of the chassis to make the airflow smoother.
• Twist Locks – Used for securing containers to skeletal trailers (called multimodal abroad). These locks fit through the corner eyes of the container then are twisted to close and lock off to hold the container in place.
• Tarmac Chutes – fitted to vehicles involved in road laying where the tarmacadam can be released from the body in a controlled manner

Truck Cab Types

Check out each individual page for more details on each of the cab types and examples of these types of trucks for sale.

• Day Cab – The lightest of the cab options and used mainly for local operations. Think two-seater sports car rather than family saloon or camper van (in the high roof sleeper example).
• Rest Cab – This truck cab will have a fold down bed which can be slept in with some reconfiguring seats. Typically used for rare occasions, this type of cab should not be used for frequent nights out.
• Low Entry Cab – Once the domain solely of refuse trucks, these cabs are used increasingly in urban operations where the crew get in and out the whole time. Also have better direct vision for pedestrians and cyclists.
• Sleeper Cab – A straightforward cab with room enough for the driver to spend the night. Will be available as single or double bunk options although will be used for shorter journeys than the high cabbed alternative.
• High Roof Sleeper – Truck makers have their own brands for these large cab types that drivers can stand up in – Scania has the Topline, DAF has the Super Space, Volvo has the Globetrotter XL, Mercedes has the GigaSpace, MAN has the GX, XXL. These will often feature two bunks for double-shifted driving and have plenty of additional creature comforts for long periods away from home.
• Crew Cab – These types of cab will typically be used for recovery truck operation where the passengers in a recovered car can also be transported safely home. Other uses include refuse trucks, fire trucks and municipal-type operations.
• Double – Not really to do with trucks in the Truck Pages sense, but we see the term a lot. These are used for pick up trucks that have two rows of seats as well as an open back.

Truck Emissions Standards

Listed below are the approximate introduction dates and the target levels of NOx permitted to reach the standard. For many of the low emission zones like the London LEZ (now ULEZ) a minimum requirement of Euro 6 is required. From Euro 4 Adblue and SCR emissions control was introduced for most trucks.

• Euro 1 – 1993-1996 8g/kWh NOx
• Euro 2 – 1996-2000 7g/kWh NOx
• Euro 3 – 2000-2006 5g/kWh NOx
• Euro 4 – 2006-2009 3.5g/kWh NOx
• Euro 5 – 2009-20014 2g/kWh NOx
• Euro 6 2014-current 0.5g/kWh NOx

Tail Lift Types

View the dedicated tail lift pages for more detail on the types of tail lifts

• Column Tail lift – Usually mounted to the rear of a box or curtainside body, the platform is raised using a hidden chain or hydraulic system. Cheaper in the main and used in the UK more than abroad. Fast to deploy.
• Tuck Away Tail lift – Hidden underneath the chassis out of the way makes for easier loading with a fork lift and loading bay.
• Cantilever Tail lift – The platform hydraulically folds to cover the rear of the body. Can lift heavier loads with long platforms. Will often replace the need for a rear door to the body.

Truck Mounted Cranes

These will often be referred to by the brand ‘Hiab’ so you may well see a crane truck advertised as a ‘Hiab Truck’ even if the crane has been made by a different company. Popular brands are Hiab, HMF, Atlas, Fassi, Palfinger, PM & Bonfiglioni.

• What is a Tonne Metre? Also written as ‘TM’ it is important to know that the longer the crane arm, the smaller the weight it will be able to lift (the whole principle of a lever applies). So it is important to tell people not just how much a crane can lift (in tonnes) but how far away this can be lifted from the centre of gravity. Multiplying the tonnes and the metres together will give you a TM value. So, a 10TM crane is five tonnes at a radius of two metres from the centre of the crane.
• Why are some truck cranes remote controlled? Normally the operator will operate crane controls standing alongside the truck crane using a series of levers. For larger cranes, there are often a secondary set of levers mounted on top to give the operator a better view of the loading. One step further involves a remote control box that the operator wears around their necks and an control the operation from any (safe) location for the best view of the loading and surroundings at any time.
• Front Mounted Crane – Mounted behind the cab, the most common location. For larger cranes, a second axle towards the front of the vehicle may be required to prevent overloading, and a nine-tonne axle advised (normal front axle is 8 tonnes)
• Mid Mounted – A rare configuration bat can be seen on long 8×2 trucks, especially for brick grab operation where the weights re high and a front mounted crane would not be able to lift over these distances.  (See ‘What is a tonne metre’ above)
• Rear Mounted – Also less common than front mounted These are typically seen with drawbar applications where the crane will load the rigid truck and the trailer.
• Testing (LOLER) – Stands for the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations. These state that the operator must be competent, but also that the equipment has to be ‘fit for purpose’. This means it must be clearly marked and Loler tested.

Truck Mounted Forklifts

These do what they say on the tin. Once loaded, the forklift puts its forks into a special slot at the rear of the trailer and then lifts itself off the floor. The vehicle can then use its own forklift for unloading when there is none at the destination location. The most popular brand is a ‘Moffet’

Major Truck Brands (In order UK market size)

• DAF – Originally a Dutch business now owned by US PACCAR, UK market leader and Europe’s tractor unit market leader. Well loved in the UK and a strong dealer network. Right hand trucks all assembled in the UK.
• Scania – Swedish business now owned by VW (via the Traton Group – See MAN too) the companies are now sharing technology with each other, Scania is seen as a ‘Premium’ brand and resale values are reflected accordingly.
• Volvo – Another ‘Premium’ Swedish brand that owns Renault Trucks as well.
• Mercedes-Benz – Obviously German, part of the Daimler Trucks business which is the world’s largest truck manufacturer which also owns Mitsubishi Fuso. A broad range from small vans to the heaviest of tractor units.
• Iveco – Part of the CASE New Holland (CNH) business (Fiat) the Italian business was created from a merger of companies in the early 1980s. Keen on pushing gas fuelled trucks.
• Renault – French business, now part of the Volvo Group, strong in France, less so in the UK
• MAN –  German business now part of VW’s Traton (see Scania above). Claim to have invented the Diesel engine and still have business interests in selling large engines

Minor Truck Brands

• Dennis Eagle – They still make plenty of refuse trucks for the UK market, now owned by the Dutch Terberg Group
• Hino – Owned by Toyota and made a couple of attempts to break into the UK and European market, none of which have been successful. Latterly through Harris Assemblers in Ireland but effectively pulled out after Euro 4.
• Isuzu Truck – A relative newcomer to the UK market with their lightweight, high payload trucks well suited to recovery and tipping work. They make plenty of these elsewhere in the world, just not a large player in the UK.
• Mitsubishi Fuso – Owned by Daimler and marketed in the UK but Mercedes-Benz, the Fuso trucks are also lightweight models with strong payloads that compete directly with Isuzu Truck.

Historic Truck Brands

• ERF ‘Edwin Richard Foden’ – The last of the domestic UK manufacturers that was bought by MAN and was eventually killed off as a brand in 2007, but which time the trucks were rebadged MAN trucks.  Still well-loved in the UK.
• Foden – Another British brand that was bought by Paccar and run independently until PACCAR also bought Leyland Trucks and DAF in the late 1990s. Foden was the original company that ERF (see above) sprung from where the son of Foden founder went off on his own!
• Scammell – Part of Leyland Motors since the 1950s, Scammell was best known for heavy haulage and military trucks. The manufacturing facility and brand was lost after the takeover of Leyland Trucks by DAF in 1987.
• Pegasus Trucks – Spanish truck maker bought by Iveco in the early 1990s. Pegaso had earlier bought British brand Seddon Atkinson.
• Seddon Atkinson – Formed through a merger in the 1970s and subsequently sold to tractor manufacturer International Harvester in 1974 who sold it to Pegaso owners, ENASA. The company was sold to Iveco killed off the Seddon Atkinson brand by 2006.