Parked up overnight
A long-distance driver takes a mandatory break parked in a lay-by or an unfamiliar yard through the night — alone in the cab, hours from base, and an easy target if anyone comes calling.
Transport & Logistics
HGV and van drivers, multi-drop couriers and depot and yard staff spend long hours on their own — parked up overnight, delivering to unfamiliar addresses, or working a night shift among moving vehicles. Not A Lone Worker keeps a welfare check on every run and shift so an incident on the road or in the yard is picked up quickly, not at the next handover.
Where it goes wrong
Long solo hours, unfamiliar drops and night work in the yard are where transport turns into lone-worker risk. These are the situations UK transport teams plan for.
A long-distance driver takes a mandatory break parked in a lay-by or an unfamiliar yard through the night — alone in the cab, hours from base, and an easy target if anyone comes calling.
A delivery driver works a long list of drops to addresses they’ve never seen — remote farms, back-of-industrial-estate units, doorsteps that don’t always welcome a caller.
A yard or depot worker loads and shunts on a night shift among reversing trailers and MHE, in a big, noisy space where a colleague wouldn’t necessarily see them go down.
A driver breaks down or has an incident on a quiet stretch of road in the early hours. They’re stood on a hard shoulder or a dark verge, waiting, on their own.
How NALW fits
Each of those maps to something the platform already does — it’s a welfare check on the person, not another tracker on the vehicle.
Parked up overnight: a check-in at key points — including through a long break — keeps confirming the driver is fine by SMS, email or one-tap link. Miss it and a grace window, nudge, then escalation take over, so a quiet cab doesn’t stay unchecked all night.
A multi-drop into the unknown: if a drop turns nasty, a panic/SOS or a texted HELP raises an instant alert with the driver’s last-known location — without them having to make an obvious call in front of anyone.
A night shift in the yard: the worker clocks on with START and an expected finish. If the shift runs over with no DONE, it flags overdue and raises the escalation ladder on its own — the catch for someone who’s gone down unseen.
A breakdown late at night: if a driver doesn’t answer a check after an incident, our AI caller “Zoe” phones them, and anything that isn’t clearly “I’m fine” fails safe and escalates to the transport office or a named contact with the last-known location.
Start here
Welfare checks across a run by SMS, email or the no-install link, with a grace window before escalation.
See check-insClock a run or yard shift on and off by text; overdue shifts auto-escalate, and you see last-known positions.
See shifts & locationsA one-tap alarm and HELP keyword for an incident on the road or in the yard — instant alert, last-known location.
See panic & SOSA shift in the life
Picture a haulier running trunk work overnight. Each driver texts START with an expected finish at the start of the run and gets a welfare check through their break. The transport office can see on the Locations map where each one last checked in safe — a welfare picture, not a minute-by-minute tail of the truck.
One driver has an incident on a quiet stretch in the early hours and stops responding. The check goes unanswered, the shift passes its expected finish, and Zoe’s call gets no reassuring reply — so the escalation ladder reaches the duty planner with the driver’s last-known location, rather than the gap surfacing only when the truck fails to arrive.
This is an illustration of how the pieces fit together, not a real client story — but every step in it is something the platform does today.
Further reading
BS 8484 comes up in almost every lone worker device conversation — often as a badge with little explanation. Here's what the British Standard actually addresses.
Lone working is more common than most employers realise — and it isn't just remote fieldwork. Here's who counts as a lone worker, and what that means for your duty of care.
There's no law that bans working alone — but the general duties absolutely apply. Here's what UK health and safety guidance actually expects of employers.