Truck navigation built by someone who is still driving
Most truck sat-navs are built by companies. This one is built by a driver who is out on the road every week, meets the same low bridges and narrow lanes you do, and fixes them the same evening.
Free while in testing · Nine countries, every vehicle profile · Android tablet or phone
The problem
You already know it
You put your height and weight into the sat-nav. It still sends you under a low bridge.
You take a wrong turn. It spends three miles telling you to turn round instead of finding a new way.
It puts you down a single-track lane, and you get out to snap branches off a tree to get through.
You report it. Nothing changes. Two years later it is still wrong.
Every truck sat-nav on the market has the same weakness, and it is not a software problem. It is a data problem. The map does not know which roads a lorry can actually get down — and the people who do know are sitting in the cab, with no way to tell it.
LorryMate is built the other way round.
Done differently
Three things
You can fix the map yourself
Sent down a road that is too narrow? Press Street unsuitable, pick a reason, and the route recalculates on the spot. That road stays marked for you from then on. Found a turn your lorry will not make? Press Avoid, and it routes round it. No forms, no waiting for someone in an office to agree with you.
Every restriction has a source and a date
When LorryMate shows a bridge height, it also knows where that number came from and when. A height read off the sign by a driver outranks anything found in a database — because the driver is looking at the sign. Where nothing is confirmed, it says so rather than guessing.
Your exact vehicle, not the nearest guess
Save every lorry you drive by name, with its real height, width, length and weight. Switch between them in two taps when you change vehicle mid-shift. The routing profile is worked out from those measurements, so it cannot drift out of step with them.
Today
What it does
- Turn-by-turn navigation in 3D, with day and night modes
- Every vehicle profile — rigid, artic, van, motorhome, bus, tractor, car — each with your real dimensions
- Several vehicles saved, switched in seconds
- Turn restrictions honoured — banned manoeuvres are read from the map, not ignored
- Avoid a turn your vehicle physically cannot make, and get a route round it
- Mark a street unsuitable and never be sent down it again
- Restriction layers on the map — low bridges, weight and width limits, lorry parking, fuel. Filter to what is on your route, within a mile, or across the whole screen
- Private and delivery-access roads included, so it takes you to the customer's door and not to the end of their lane
- “Except for access” roads flagged before you set off, so you decide whether to use them rather than being routed round a restriction that does not apply to a delivery
- Ferry crossings included — the Isle of Wight, the Lymington crossing, and Holyhead to Dublin all plan as one route, boat and all
- A satellite photo of the place you are going, dropped onto the map as a window — so an unfamiliar yard is something you have already looked at before you turn into it
- Sharp turns flagged before you reach them — the angle and the distance, with a button to route round it. A 156° turn is a reverse in an artic, and you want to know about it earlier than the junction
- Route preview — watch the whole run at speed before you leave, like the old TomToms did
- Voice guidance in 26 languages, including Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Ukrainian
- It never goes quiet — if a route cannot be found, it says exactly why and how far away the problem is
Not yet
What it does not do
I would rather you knew now than found out on a job.
- A route cannot cross from one region into another. Hampshire to Vilnius will not plan — the countries in between are not part of any region yet. Inside a region it is all one map, borders included.
- Bridge and restriction data covers Hampshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight. Outside those three, the app knows only what the public map knows — which is far less. A much bigger database is measured and waiting; it is not in the app yet, and I will not pretend it is.
- Searching for a new address needs a signal. Places you have already saved — including house names you added yourself — are found with no signal at all.
- No live traffic. Most drivers keep Google Maps running alongside for that. So do I.
- Lane guidance covers exactly one roundabout. The lane arrows do not come from the map — no map carries them for the junctions where they would matter. They are entered by hand, by someone who has driven the junction. So far that is one roundabout in the New Forest. The feature is real; the data behind it has barely started.
- No Android Auto or CarPlay. It runs on a tablet in the cab.
Everything on this list is being worked on. Nothing on it will be quietly dropped and never mentioned again.
Coverage
Where it works right now
Nine countries, and every one of them routes the full set of vehicle profiles — not a cut-down car version.
| Region | Vehicles | Address search | Works without a signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom & Ireland | Every profile — rigid, artic, van, motorhome, bus, tractor, car | Yes | Map and routes |
| Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia | Every profile | Yes | Map and routes |
| Cyprus | Every profile | Yes | Map and routes |
| France, Spain, Portugal | Every profile | Yes | Not yet |
Address search now covers the whole of Europe. Not just these four regions — anywhere in Europe. Edinburgh, Belfast, Lisbon, Riga, Paris, Nicosia: all found, street and postcode.
Routing is the part that is still four separate regions. This is the one distinction worth understanding before you set off. Searching finds the place; routing gets you there, and routing cannot cross from one region into another. A run from Hampshire to Vilnius will not plan, because the countries in between are not part of any region yet — even though the search box finds Vilnius perfectly well. Inside a region, everything works normally, borders included.
“Map and routes” means the tablet can do the whole job in flight mode — draw the map and work out the route, with no signal at all. That now covers the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Baltic states and Cyprus. Two downloads per region: for the UK it is a 2.1 GB map and a 510 MB routing file, for the Baltics 682 MB and 97 MB, for Cyprus 39 MB and 17 MB. France, Spain and Portugal have no download of either kind yet. This list changes as regions are built, so it is worth re-reading before a trip.
The hand-measured bridge and restriction data covers Hampshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight — and stops there. Not “thinner elsewhere”: outside those three the app falls back on what the public map carries, which is a great deal less. A database twenty-five times the size is measured and ready but not yet in the app. If you drive somewhere else and want it next, say so — the order is decided by where the testers actually drive.
In the cab
What it looks like
Real screenshots from a tablet on the road, taken this week. Nothing here is a mock-up or a render.
Testing
Try it
LorryMate is in testing. It is free to use while it is, and everything you report goes straight to the person who wrote the code.
Not on Google Play yet, so your tablet will ask you to allow the install. Here is how. When it is on, the driver's guide walks you through it one screen at a time, and the questions page covers what usually goes wrong.
What I need back from you
Nothing formal. When something goes wrong, tell me:
- Where you were and where you were going
- Which vehicle you had selected
- What it did, and what it should have done
A photo of the screen is worth more than a paragraph.