I remember the first night away clearly. A layby off the A1 near Doncaster — I know, I know — because there was nothing else available after a delay at the RDC knocked three hours off my plan and I'd run out of options. Curtains drawn, engine off to save fuel, and the distinct feeling that I might have made some kind of error by taking the tramping job.
That's week one. Everything's slightly wrong. You haven't found a rhythm. You don't know where you're going to stop each night. You haven't figured out what needs to be in the cab permanently and what can stay at home. And nobody at the depot mentioned any of this at the induction, because the induction was about the tachograph and the walkaround check and where the fuel bay is — not about how you're going to feel on Tuesday night parked in a service station car park eating something from a petrol station microwave.
The mental side nobody mentions
Tramping has a version of itself that gets talked about in break rooms — freedom of the road, no forklift drivers breathing down your neck, your own schedule within your hours. That version isn't wrong, exactly. But it takes a while to arrive.
The reality of the first few weeks is that you're doing the job competently and feeling vaguely unsettled at the same time. Three nights away from home is a different experience from one. First night, you're getting settled. Second night, you've got a routine developing. Third night, it drags. You're messaging the same people at home who've already moved on with their evening, eating food you wouldn't choose if you had alternatives, and the cab that felt reasonably spacious on Sunday afternoon is starting to feel like a very expensive cupboard.
The loneliness curve is real and it takes about eight to ten weeks to flatten. Most drivers either adapt and genuinely start to like the autonomy, or they put in for a local run after a month. Neither answer is wrong — tramping suits some people and not others, and you don't always know which one you are until you've done it. I spent my first two weeks wondering which camp I was in.
Finding a night stop: the skill nobody teaches you
This is the most practically important skill in tramping and you have to learn it yourself, or from someone who's done it before, because it's not in any induction.
The rule I follow: never leave finding a night stop until you're close to running out of hours. Plan it earlier in the day, when you still have flexibility. If I know I'm going to need to stop somewhere around Carlisle, I'm thinking about what's available there before I've left Birmingham, not at nine in the evening when I've got an hour left and I'm already tired.
Motorway services are expensive but reliable — they're there, they're open, you know what you're getting. Lymm Services on the M6 is a regular stop on north-west runs — decent facilities, enough trucks that you're not parked alone in a dark corner. Stafford Services northbound is another one I use on M6 work. DIRFT Rugby has truck parking if you're in that area, and it's useful if you've got a morning collection nearby. Immingham has parking options around the dock area if you're doing port work.
Avoid lay-bys for overnight rest periods. I know some drivers use them regularly and they're fine for a rest break in an emergency. But for a proper overnight — your daily rest, your weekly rest — you want somewhere with lighting, somewhere with facilities, somewhere that isn't just a widened bit of road next to 70mph traffic. The safety argument alone is worth it, never mind the quality of sleep.
What goes in the cab — the actual list
I got this wrong for the first couple of months. Either I had too much stuff and the cab felt chaotic, or I didn't have enough and I was driving to a 24-hour Tesco at half ten because I needed a phone charger. Here's the version I settled on.
Duvet and pillow. Not a sleeping bag — a proper duvet. You're not camping. The cab has a bunk and you should use it like a bed. Forget it once, wake up with your jacket under your head, and you'll have a permanent pillow living in that truck forever.
Kettle — twelve-volt, a good one. The cheap ones die inside three months. You'll use it twice a day at minimum — coffee in the morning, something hot in the evening. The difference between a £15 kettle and a £40 kettle is whether you're still using it in December.
Phone charger. A proper one, hardwired into the cab's electrical system if possible, or at least a quality USB adapter. Your phone is your alarm, your navigation, your music, your contact with the agency and the operator and everyone at home. If it dies overnight, everything goes wrong at once. Don't rely on the lighter socket adapter that came in a three-pack.
Torch — small LED, lives on the bunk. Night-time coupling checks in an unlit yard. Walking around a dark trailer to check the lights are working. Dealing with a tail lift in a poorly-lit compound at seven in the morning. You need a torch more often than you'd expect and it costs about six quid.
Food — actual food. I know services are easy. I know you're tired and someone else has cooked it. But motorway service food every night for a week is genuinely depressing, and it adds up to a meaningful chunk of your nights-away allowance. A small cool box, some basics — bread, fruit, something that doesn't need much preparation — makes the week easier and less expensive. The microwave at Immingham dock gate gets a lot of use for a reason.
Cab rest and weekly rest: what the rules actually say
Under Mobility Package I, taking your regular weekly rest in the cab is prohibited. Regular weekly rest is 45 hours. If you're due a regular weekly rest during a tramping run — and at some point during a week away, you will be — the operator must arrange suitable accommodation. That means a hotel or equivalent, at their cost, not "sleep in the bunk it's the same thing."
Reduced weekly rest — 24 hours — can still be taken in the cab. And in practice, most tramping runs involve reduced weekly rests mid-week with the regular weekly rest taken at home. But if your run keeps you away long enough that you can't get home for the regular rest, that's a conversation you need to have with the operator before you leave the yard, not while you're sitting in Carlisle on a Thursday evening wondering what the arrangements are.
I'm not going to pretend this is always handled perfectly in practice. Some operators have it properly sorted — accommodation booked, procedures clear, no ambiguity. Others are vague about it and hope the schedule works out. Know what you're entitled to before you sign for a tramping contract, and make sure it's confirmed explicitly rather than assumed.
The backload gamble
You've delivered. You're in Carlisle, or Dover, or somewhere that isn't where you started. The return load is "TBC" — might be something, might not be until tomorrow morning, might not materialise at all.
The backload gamble is a constant in tramping. Wait in the yard hoping for a load that might come up and lose time, or book dead miles home and cost the operator money. There's no clean answer and experienced tramping drivers develop a feel for which way to call it based on how reliable the operator is, what the freight market looks like, and whether they can afford to be away another night.
Agency tramping complicates this. You're not always the one who knows what's on the board — your agency knows, the host operator knows, somewhere between them is the information about whether there's a return load, and your job is to stay in contact and not commit to anything before you know what's happening. A lot of agency tramping disputes start because someone assumed a load was or wasn't coming and acted on the assumption without checking.
Dead miles aren't always the operator's loss, depending on your contract. Driving time is driving time. But your side of it is to make yourself available for a load and communicate clearly. That's it.
Nights away allowance: what it is and what it isn't
Most tramping contracts include a nights away allowance — a daily supplement for overnight stays away from home. HMRC has a benchmark rate for this; check the current figure at gov.uk before relying on any number you read anywhere, including here, because it gets updated. As of 2024 it was around £26.20 per night for UK overnight stays without receipts, but verify the current rate with your employer or accountant rather than taking that as definitive.
The point is that this allowance is tax-free up to the HMRC limit when paid without receipts. That's why operators use it — it's an efficient way to compensate drivers for the genuine costs of being away from home without requiring a receipts process.
What it isn't: guaranteed if you're not actually away overnight. If the run finishes and you're home by midnight, the nights away supplement typically doesn't apply — and if you're agency, get it confirmed in writing before the job that you'll receive it for nights actually worked away. The number of agency drivers who've told me the allowance "wasn't included" after a week away from home is not small enough to be reassuring.
Week ten
Something changes around week eight or ten. Either you've made your decision that tramping isn't for you and you're applying for local runs, or you've found your rhythm and the job starts to make sense in a way it didn't at the beginning.
You know the truck parks. You know which services have showers worth using — Stafford Services northbound is reasonable, Lymm has its moments. You know that Immingham dock gate has a microwave and that knowing this is genuinely useful information. You know the sequences of your regular runs, which RDCs are sensible and which ones will eat two hours out of your day for no good reason. You've got a playlist or a podcast series that lasts a full working week.
The gym thing is worth doing if you're doing this long-term. Stafford Services northbound and Lymm Services both have gyms, and both are regular stops on M6 work. A membership that covers motorway services gyms pays for itself in a few months and gives you somewhere to properly wash when you're not at a yard with facilities. Shower tokens at DIRFT Rugby are available at the gate — cheap, the showers are fine, worth knowing if you're in that area regularly.
The loneliness doesn't go away entirely. You'll still have the third night of a run where you'd rather be home. But it flattens into something manageable — background noise rather than the main thing you're thinking about. And some of the best conversations I've had in this job were in truck park laybys late at night with another driver who'd also had a difficult day. There's a social side to tramping that doesn't get mentioned in job adverts. You see the same people again and again at the same places. You share information about routes, about operators, about which delivery sites are run by decent people and which ones treat drivers like an inconvenience.
None of that happens in week one. But it does happen. And for a lot of drivers — myself included, eventually — it's part of why tramping is worth it.
If you want to keep track of your weekly rest, your availability records and your nights away as they happen rather than piecing them together from memory at the end of the week, ShiftOwt handles that for you.