British English Vocabulary For Vehicles: From Taxis To Lorries Ep 759

Learn the names of various British road vehicles & expand your English vocabulary so you can travel confidently in the UK & other English-speaking countries.

Learning a language is like tuning a car – it requires constant adjustment and practice.
⭐ Luis von Ahn

1. What are the key differences between a bus and a coach in British English?
   In British English, a “bus” is typically used for shorter, local journeys within a town or city. Buses can be single-decker or double-decker. A “coach,” on the other hand, is used for longer distances, such as travel between cities. Coaches are usually more comfortable, with facilities for long-distance travel.
2. How do the terms “truck” and “lorry” differ in UK English?
   In UK English, “truck” and “lorry” are used to describe vehicles for transporting goods. Generally, “lorry” is used more commonly in the UK, and it often refers to larger vehicles. “Truck” can be used interchangeably but is more common in American English. For instance, HGVs (Heavy Goods Vehicles) and LGVs (Light Goods Vehicles) are types of lorries in the UK.
3. What types of vehicles are included in the emergency services in the UK?
   The UK emergency services use several types of vehicles. These include ambulances for medical emergencies, police cars for law enforcement, and fire engines (or fire trucks in the US) for firefighting. Ambulances and fire engines are equipped with blue lights and sirens for urgent responses.
4. What is the difference between a motorbike and a scooter?
   A “motorbike” (or motorcycle) is a two-wheeled vehicle with a more powerful engine, often used for longer distances and higher speeds. A “scooter” is also a two-wheeled vehicle but has a smaller engine and is typically used for shorter, urban commutes. Scooters have a step-through frame, making them easier to mount and ride, especially for shorter trips.
5. What are the distinctions between a caravan, camper van, and motorhome?
   A “caravan” is a trailer that is towed behind a car and used as living accommodation during travel. A “camper van” combines both the driving and living areas in one vehicle and is typically smaller. A “motorhome” is similar to a camper van but larger and more equipped for extended travel. In the US, motorhomes are often called RVs (Recreational Vehicles).

This lesson is your linguistic road trip through the streets of English vocabulary. From double-deckers to lorries, you’ll navigate the highways of British English, fuelling your fluency for confident travels ahead.

• Iconic: Very famous and well-known, representing something important.
• Navigate: To find your way or to travel through a place or situation.
• Anchor: To firmly fix something in place or in your mind.
• Variety: A range of different things; diversity.
• Fare: The money you pay for a journey on public transport.
• Cab: The front part of a vehicle where the driver sits.
• Pedal: To push the pedals of a bicycle with your feet to make it move.
• Paramedic: A medical professional who provides emergency care.
• Unmarked: Not showing any signs that something is what it is, especially for vehicles like police cars.
• Tow: To pull a vehicle or object with another vehicle.

Hi there. Today let’s do some really practical vocabulary, learning vehicle names in English. And then in Thursday’s podcast, let’s do something much more emotionally engaging, something people may have strong opinions or feelings about. But today, ‘nuts and bolts’ English. Let’s help you increase your vocabulary. So words in English for different types of vehicles. So we are talking transport, how you get around, and I’ll cover the words for road vehicles that we use.

From iconic double-decker buses that you might see in London, to the differences between a truck and a lorry. This lesson will help you navigate in English-speaking countries with confidence. It will help you when you’re travelling in an English-speaking country. Don’t forget to listen to this podcast a number of times to anchor any new words in your mind. As ever, I’ll start with the easy vocabulary, the easy words, and I’ll move to the more difficult ones as we go. Do you know the difference between a bus and a coach? Between a fire truck and a fire engine? There’ll probably be some words you don’t know. Let’s see.

You’re probably also familiar with the word ‘bus’. B-U-S. Known as a ‘buzz’ up north in the UK! This is a long vehicle with many seats and a driver. And you pay to go on the bus. You pay your ‘bus fare’. That’s F-A-R-E. In the UK buses can be ‘single-decker’. That means they have no upstairs. Or they can be ‘double-decker’. Meaning that the bus has an upstairs or a ‘top deck’. D-E-C-K. Famously, in London and other cities, you might see sight-seeing buses. Which are double-deckers but the roof has been removed from the top deck. And it’s open to the air. So you don’t miss anything. And a ‘bus’ is different to a ‘coach’. ‘Coach’, C-O-A-C-H. Usually a ‘coach’ is a single-decker bus. But it’s going a longer distance. Across country between towns or cities. So we use ‘bus’ to mean the vehicle that we catch to do local journeys. And a ‘coach’ is what you would catch if you were going up to Scotland. Assuming you’re starting from the south, that is. In the UK, National Express is a company that runs coach services. And often people use them because it’s a lot cheaper than the train. Train fares are expensive in the UK. The disadvantage of National Express, of course – you can get stuck in a traffic jam on one of our motorways. But it is a lot cheaper.

So what about vans, trucks and lorries? Well these are working vehicles that people use for their jobs. And these words are very much UK English. There are some differences in US English. So a ‘van’, V-A-N, is a vehicle, which may look like a car at the front. With two or possibly three seats. But there is no backseat. And instead there is space to put what you need to do your work. Possibly your tools. T-O-O-L-S. So a plumber or an electrician would use a van to transport tools. What’s needed for their work, in other words. A ‘truck’, T-R-U-C-K, is a bigger vehicle. Used to transport bigger amounts of stuff. And ‘truck’ is the term more common in the US. In the UK we use both ‘truck’ and ‘lorry’. L-O-R-R-Y. And basically a ‘lorry’ in the UK is bigger than a ‘truck’. A useful definition in the UK we have is the difference between HGVs and LGVs. So HGVs are ‘Heavy Goods Vehicles’. They’re the really big lorries. And LGVs are ‘Light Goods Vehicles’. Meaning they can carry a lot less. So HGVs are the ones that you see on the motorway in the UK, Europe, probably all around the world, transporting products. Massive things, some of them. These are Heavy Goods Vehicles. And you need special training and a special licence to drive these. Supermarkets, for example, use HGVs to transport food, probably from a ‘distribution centre’. An LGV or ‘Light Goods Vehicle’ is a truck used for transporting a smaller quantity of goods. Basically a ‘lorry’ is a wagon with a flat bed, a cab and a number of wheels. And a ‘truck’ is a smaller vehicle for carrying heavy loads.

Other terms for road vehicles that you might come across? ‘Motorbike’ and ‘scooter’. So if you’re on a ‘motorbike’ it’s got two wheels and an engine. It’s also called a ‘motorcycle’. And of course it comes from the word ‘bicycle’, meaning ‘a vehicle with two wheels’. The word ‘bike’, B I K E, covers both ‘motorbikes’ and what we call ‘pushbikes’ or ‘cycles’. Those are the ones you pedal yourself. In the UK you are required to wear a crash helmet if you ride a motorbike. But if you ride a pushbike you don’t have to wear a cycling helmet. But it’s probably a good idea. A ‘scooter’, S C O O T E R, it’s similar to a motorbike but smaller and has a smaller engine, less powerful. And ‘scooters’ are what we call ‘step through’. Meaning that unlike a motorbike you don’t have to have a leg at each side as though you’re riding a horse. You can have your knees together on a scooter. Therefore scooters are beloved of elderly people. Whereas motorbikes you might associate with leathers and ‘Easyrider’ perhaps!

Other types of vehicle? Well an ‘ambulance’. That’s A M B U L A N C E. Again a word that’s similar in quite a few languages. An ‘ambulance’ is a vehicle which is used to transport people who are ill or who’ve had an emergency. Perhaps they’ve had an accident and they’re injured and they need transport to hospital. Inside an ‘ambulance’ it’s high tech. There’s a lot of technology, medical technology inside. Often used to keep people alive while they’re being transported to hospital. And highly trained ‘paramedics’ are the crew that you’ll associate with an ambulance. That’s ‘paramedic’, that’s P A R A M E D I C. That’s the medical person who attends you in an emergency, a ‘paramedic’. These are part of the three emergency services in the UK. So they have a blue light on the top and they do what are known as ‘blue light runs’. That means they put the blue light on, there’s a siren and other vehicles on the road need to get out of the way and let them through. The other two emergency services are the police. So an ordinary police car may be ‘unmarked’ or ‘marked’. If it’s ‘unmarked’ it looks like an ordinary car and if it’s ‘marked’ it means it’s painted up as a police car and it’s probably got a blue light on the top and a siren. Of course the other emergency service is the fire service. You also may do blue light runs when they’re rescuing someone or they’re trying to get quickly to a building on fire. In the US they’d say ‘a fire truck’ but in the UK we say ‘a fire engine’. Either way they’re always painted red.

Last two terms, ‘caravan’ and ‘camper van’. So these are vehicles that you might go on holiday in or at least away for the weekend.

So a ‘caravan’, C-A-R-A-V-A-N, typically is a home on wheels that you pull or ‘tow’, T-O-W behind your car. And a ‘camper van’ is almost the same except the engine and the driver are housed within the same vehicle as the living accommodation. It’s all in one vehicle and they’re generally much smaller. The iconic camper van is of course the VW camper, the Volkswagen camper, which you may well recognise. In the UK we also talk about ‘motorhomes’, that’s when it is a bigger vehicle but it’s like a large camper. In the US these are called RVs or ‘Recreational Vehicles’. They tend to have different makes to us, one example being Winnebago, that’s an RV. Okay so I think we’ve covered most of them there.

Let me just recap on the vocabulary. I covered car, taxi, bus, coach, van, truck, lorry, motorbike and scooter. I covered the emergency service vehicles which are ambulance, police car, fire engine or fire truck and I covered the vehicles that you might go on holiday in. So that’s a caravan or a camper van or in the US an RV or Recreational Vehicle.

Let us know whether this podcast is useful and let me know also whether the recap at the end of the vocabulary covered is a good idea and helpful. We love to hear from you.