Pulled up to a new yard on the edge of Birmingham at half five in the morning. Never been there before. Agency called the night before — unit and trailer, collection at six, drops heading north as far as Carlisle. I knew nothing about the vehicle, nothing about the trailer, and the only person in the yard was a security guard who pointed me toward a row of trucks and said it was the one with my name on a bit of paper in the window.
No briefing. No induction pack. No handover notes from the previous driver. Just a set of keys and a reg number scrawled in biro on a Post-it.
That's most agency starts. And the gap between "here's your keys" and "here's your PG9" is exactly where first-day prohibitions live. I've seen it happen. I've nearly let it happen to me. And I've watched drivers who knew what they were doing fly through a new yard start without a problem, because they had a system and they ran it every single time.
The operator's responsible — and so are you
Here's how the law looks at this. The operator holds the O-licence. Every vehicle on that licence is their responsibility — maintained, compliant, roadworthy. It doesn't matter who's driving it that day. An agency driver isn't an exemption from any of that. The vehicle on their plate is their vehicle, and if a DVSA officer finds it defective, the prohibition lands on the vehicle and the operator.
But the driver offence is a separate thing. If you drove a vehicle with a defect you should have caught on a walkaround check — and you didn't check — that's on you. Operator gets the vehicle prohibition. You potentially get the driver prohibition. Depending on the defect and whether it contributed to anything, it could get considerably worse than that.
The fact that no one briefed you properly doesn't protect you from the walkaround responsibility. Harsh, yes. But accurate.
The walkaround: your first job, every time
Before you look at the tachograph, before you read the delivery paperwork, before you move the seat — the walkaround check. It's your legal responsibility to inspect the vehicle before driving it, and to report any defects in writing. Not verbally. Not "I mentioned it to the night shift." In writing, signed, dated, filed with the operator.
What you're looking for: tyres (pressure, damage, tread depth, cuts to the sidewall), lights and reflectors, mirrors and glass, bodywork and chassis, brake lines and air hoses, fifth wheel coupling if it's a unit. Walk the full perimeter. Check the cab interior — warning lights, windscreen, wipers, horn. Check under the trailer if you can see anything obviously wrong. This isn't a tick-box exercise — it's the record that shows you did your job before anything moved.
If you find a defect, report it before the vehicle moves. If the defect is dangerous — a brake light that doesn't work, a tyre that's visibly compromised, a coupling that doesn't look right — the vehicle doesn't go until it's rectified. I've covered what DVSA actually looks at during an inspection, and which defects trigger what level of prohibition, at HGV walkaround check: defects and prohibition. Worth a read before your next first day.
Check the calibration plaque — every time
This one gets skipped on first-day starts more than almost anything else. You don't know the vehicle's history. You don't know whether the previous driver flagged the calibration overdue. And it's not a thing that stares you in the face the way a flat tyre does.
The tachograph calibration plaque is usually on the nearside of the cab — door pillar, A-pillar area, sometimes inside the door itself. It shows the date of the last calibration and when the next one's due. Calibration is a two-year legal requirement. If that date has expired and nobody noticed, the tachograph is still running but the data it's producing isn't legally valid. That predates you. It's not your fault it got to that point — but you're the one driving the vehicle today.
Ask before you go. "This calibration's overdue, has it been sorted?" is a two-second conversation that is infinitely better than finding out about it when someone downloads the VU and starts asking questions. More detail on what expired calibration means for you at tachograph calibration and the two-year interval.
Driver card: in before you move. Not after.
The vehicle doesn't move without your driver card inserted. Not three metres to the fuel bay. Not across the yard to the loading dock. Not anywhere. The moment the front axle moves without a valid card in the slot, you've created a record gap — and record gaps are infringements.
I'm not being dramatic. I've watched drivers insert their card after moving the vehicle a short distance and then wonder why the download showed an anomaly at the start of the shift. The tachograph records from the moment the vehicle moves. That's what it's designed to do.
Also check the mode before you pull away. If the previous driver left the unit in availability or work mode — which happens — your first recorded activity will look wrong. It should be drive mode when you're about to drive. Sounds obvious, but on a dark yard at half five in the morning with someone waiting for you at the gatehouse it's easy to miss. More on mode selection at tachograph mode symbols: drive, availability, work, rest.
Trailer coupling: the bits that actually bite you
If you're on a unit and trailer, the coupling check is its own checklist and it matters more than almost anything else on the walkaround. You inherit whatever the previous driver left behind — and sometimes what they left behind is a problem they didn't know about, or did know about and hoped for the best with.
Fifth wheel: king pin fully engaged, safety catch in the locked position and moving freely. Pull the trailer forward to confirm it's secured before you raise the landing legs. Landing legs: fully raised, pins in, nothing catching. Airlines: red and yellow, both connected, no visible cracking or damage to the hoses, couplings seated properly. Lights: walk the trailer with your lights on — rear lights, brake lights, indicators, marker lights. If any are out, that's a defect that needs reporting before you go.
If the trailer's pre-loaded, you're responsible for the security of that load the moment you move it. Check the curtains, the straps, the lashing points. If something looks wrong with the load, say so before you move rather than at the customer's gate after 200 miles on the M6.
One thing I always do at a new yard on a strange unit: check whether the trailer is actually on the operator's O-licence. Trailer registration features on restricted-use licences. If the trailer's not on the licence and you're stopped, that's the operator's problem — but you're still the one stopped at the side of the road explaining it.
Agency vs host operator: who's tracking your hours
This causes more confusion in agency work than people expect. The host operator — the yard, whose vehicle you're driving — owns the vehicle unit (VU). They're responsible for downloading that VU every 90 days. Your driver card holds your personal records and needs downloading every 28 days — and if you're agency, the agency is usually the one responsible for keeping those working time records, because they're the entity paying you.
In practice, your driving time gets recorded in two places: the VU and your card. Discrepancies between them — a card gap where you forgot to insert, a download that was missed, a mode error that makes the records look inconsistent — can look like attempted manipulation of records to someone reviewing the data. It isn't, usually. But it's exactly the kind of headache nobody needs when there's already a compliance check happening.
Keep your card downloads up to date. The card holds a rolling 28-day window — older data gets overwritten. If your agency or their compliance team doesn't request downloads regularly, do it yourself with a reader or check the download interval requirements and prompt them.
The questions to ask before you move anything
Nobody hands you a checklist on most agency starts. You make your own. Here's the one I've built over years of turning up at yards where the briefing was a set of keys and a vague wave toward the gate.
Vehicle and trailer height — total height, not just the cab. If you don't know the combined height of your unit and trailer, you don't know what restrictions you're subject to on the route. Low bridges are everywhere and they don't move. Get the number before you go. Some operators have it on the vehicle. If not, ask — and if no one knows, find out before you leave the yard.
Gross weight. If you're going anywhere near a weighbridge, you want to know what this combination should weigh laden. Dispatch figures and actual load don't always match. Not your fault if someone in the warehouse overloaded the trailer — but you're the driver of record and you'll be the one at the weighbridge explaining it.
Any known defects from the previous driver. Did the last person out report a pull on the brakes, an air leak, a warning light that was "probably nothing"? Ask directly. If the answer is "I don't know" or "it should be fine," write down that you asked and got a non-answer before you leave.
Fuel card PIN and fuel point location — because being turned away from the fuel bay at the start of a shift when you're already tight on time is genuinely miserable, and it happens more than it should.
Drop sequence and site restrictions. Which sites have specific delivery windows? Which ones have restricted access — height bars, weight limits, "no artics" signs that appear only once you've already committed to the approach? Ask whether any of your drops have restrictions that affect how you sequence the run or what time you need to be there.
Return instructions. Are you bringing the trailer back? Dropping it somewhere and booking off? Parking overnight? Know before you leave. "I assumed" causes arguments between agencies and operators about who owes what at the end of a shift.
Who gets the PG9 — and why it can be both of you
Prohibition notices come in flavours. A PG9 on a vehicle is the operator's problem — it grounds the vehicle, potentially triggers a DVSA investigation, and goes on the operator's record. A prohibition on a driver relates to a driver offence. Many situations produce both: a defective vehicle the driver should have spotted and didn't.
As an agency driver, "I just arrived" is a partial mitigation, not a full defence. You're responsible for the walkaround check. You're responsible for checking the tachograph equipment. You're responsible for operating within your hours. The operator carries the vehicle maintenance responsibility — but that doesn't remove yours. It sits alongside it.
The protection is simple: do the checks, write them down, report defects before you move. If something's not right, have the conversation before you're on the A74(M) northbound with a DVSA van behind you.
Making your own induction when nobody gives you one
Most things that go wrong on a first day at a new yard would have been obvious with ten minutes of asking the right questions. Most operators don't mean to put you in a difficult position — they're busy, they've got their own drivers to deal with, and they assume you know your way around a truck.
You're the one whose licence and livelihood is on the line. Run the list. Do the checks. And if the briefing doesn't happen — when the briefing doesn't happen — make your own briefing by going through everything above before the wheels move.
If you're tired of writing tacho infringements into a notebook, ShiftOwt tracks 561/WTD compliance automatically — £5.99/mo for drivers, agency pricing on request.