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
- 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.
- Planning a route needs a signal — everywhere except Cyprus. The map itself you can download and use with no signal in three of the four regions, but the routing itself runs on the server. Cyprus is the one region whose routing data you can download today.
- Address search needs a signal, and only covers part of southern England. Everywhere else, set the destination on the map. Places you have already saved — including house names you added yourself — are still 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 | Southern England only | Map only |
| Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia | Every profile | Not yet | Map only |
| Cyprus | Every profile | Not yet | Map and routes |
| France, Spain, Portugal | Every profile | Not yet | Not yet |
Address search is the weakest thing here, and I would rather say so plainly. The address data loaded today covers part of southern England only. Measured this afternoon: a street in Bransgore is found; Oxford Street in London, Deansgate in Manchester, Princes Street in Edinburgh, Queen Street in Cardiff, Grafton Street in Dublin and Royal Avenue in Belfast all return nothing at all.
Everywhere else — including most of the UK — you can still navigate. Set the destination by tapping the map, by coordinates, or from a place you have saved, and the routing works exactly as it does at home. It is typing a street name that fails.
A Europe-wide address index is being installed to replace it. I am not going to put a date on it until it is running.
“Works without a signal” means what you can download onto the tablet. “Map only” — the map draws with no signal, but working out the route still needs one. “Map and routes” — both, so the whole thing runs with the tablet in flight mode. France, Spain and Portugal have no download yet at all. This list changes as regions are built, so it is worth re-reading before a trip.
Hand-measured bridge and restriction data is deepest in Hampshire, Dorset and the New Forest, and thins out from there. 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
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.