Motorways are where HGVs spend their working lives, and the Highway Code gives them a specific rulebook within the rulebook. Beyond the speed limits covered elsewhere, rules 264 to 270 govern how heavy vehicles use motorway lanes, and several of them carry MUST NOTs that are law, not advice.
The defining motorway rule for trucks: the right-hand lane of a motorway with three or more lanes MUST NOT be used, except in prescribed circumstances, if you are driving:
That covers effectively every working HGV and every articulated combination. On a three-lane motorway, the right lane is simply not yours. The “prescribed circumstances” exception exists for things like directed traffic management, not for getting past a queue. And because the ban is set out in the Motorways Traffic regulations, it is an offence, not etiquette.
The general rule for everyone: keep in the left lane unless overtaking, and return to the left lane when it is safe. For HGVs this interacts with the speed-limited reality of the vehicle - overtaking a marginally slower truck takes a long time at 56mph, and the “elephant race” that blocks two lanes is what rule 264’s return-to-the-left discipline is trying to prevent.
The same rule adds a duty that costs nothing and saves lives: if you are in the left lane and it is safe, move one lane out to give room to emergency services, traffic officers, recovery workers and stopped vehicles on the hard shoulder or in an emergency area.
Overtake only on the right, and only when you are sure it is safe and legal. The Highway Code’s checklist - mirrors, judging speeds, making sure the joining lane is clear ahead and behind, a sideways glance into the blind spot, watching for traffic coming up fast from behind - applies with extra force in a vehicle with a long blind side and limited acceleration. Signal in plenty of time, move out, and do not cut in on the vehicle you have passed.
Overtaking on the left is banned - with one realistic carve-out worth knowing: in congestion, where adjacent lanes move at similar speeds and the left lane happens to move faster, you may keep up with your own lane even if that means passing traffic on your right. That is permission to hold your lane in a jam, not a licence to weave.
The hard shoulder is for emergencies, or when police, traffic officers or a traffic sign direct you into it. On smart motorways the picture changes: where the hard shoulder runs as an extra live lane, a red X or a blank sign above it means stay out except in an emergency, and you may only use it as a lane when a speed limit is shown above it. Where the hard shoulder is in use as a lane, emergency areas - blue signs, orange SOS symbol, sometimes orange surfacing - are the only place to stop in an emergency.
For HGV drivers this is worth an explicit briefing point: smart motorway layouts change the rule by overhead sign, and the sign above your lane is the law at that moment, not whatever the lane was doing yesterday.
Look well ahead for signals, signs and road markings; change lanes well ahead of a junction. Some lanes lead directly off the motorway - get into one only if you intend that direction. In a vehicle that takes time to change speed and lanes, this is a planning rule: read the gantry signs a mile out, not a hundred yards out.
Motorway rules for HGVs compress to one idea: the network gives trucks the left lanes and expects discipline in return. Fleets that drill lane discipline, overtaking judgment and hard-shoulder rules keep both their drivers and their OCRS clean.