A reversing lorry sweeps a shape much bigger than itself

Two curved bands, drawn from directly above, tracing a refuse lorry reversing into a narrow street. The outer band is the front overhang swinging wide; the inner is the path of the rear wheels. The gap between them is shaded, and at its tightest point, 0.4M is marked straight across.

That gap is the whole drawing. Everything else on it exists to show where the gap gets thin.

What is a swept path, and why does it need its own drawing?

It's the actual ground a vehicle's body covers while turning, which is a bigger and stranger shape than the vehicle's footprint parked still.

A lorry reversing into a corner doesn't just occupy the rectangle painted on its own bodywork. The front end, pivoting on the back axle, swings out well beyond where the cab itself sits — wider on the outside of the turn than anything the driver can see directly. The swept path is that swing, drawn as its own shape, because the shape is what actually has to fit and the vehicle's outline on its own tells you nothing about that.

Why does the front overhang matter more than the driver watching?

Because the part of the vehicle doing the most damage in a tight reverse is the part furthest from where the driver is looking.

A driver watching the rear wheels in a mirror is watching the inner band — the part tracking closest to where they intend to go. The outer band, the front corner of the cab, is swinging into space behind and beside the driver's own shoulder, out of any mirror's reach. That's the entire reason a banksman stands where a banksman stands: at the outer edge of the swing, watching the part of the lorry the driver structurally cannot, wearing exactly the kind of marking that's built to be seen against the dark rather than anything decorative.

What does the 0.4m figure actually mean?

It's the clearance left over at the tightest point of the turn — the gap between the outer swept edge and whatever's parked, built, or standing on that side of the street.

Below a certain figure a reverse simply doesn't fit without contact, whatever the driver does. Above it, there's margin, and the margin is what the banksman is spending attention managing rather than preventing an impossible manoeuvre. A shrinking number on a drawing like this is the difference between a street a lorry can be sent down and one it can't, worked out before the vehicle ever turns the wheel.

Why do collections like this happen before dawn on streets that can't take the lorry in daylight?

Because the street's other traffic is the thing that makes the swept path fail, not the street's width on its own.

A gap of 0.4m is manageable against a parked bin and a wall. It disappears against a parked car that wasn't there an hour earlier, a pedestrian stepping round a corner, or a line of school-run traffic backing up behind the lorry mid-turn. Early hours don't make the geometry easier — the geometry on the page is fixed regardless of the hour — they remove the variables that turn a workable clearance into contact.

Who owns the shape of a swept path drawing?

Nobody. It's an engineering convention, produced from a vehicle's wheelbase and overhang and drawn the same way for any refuse lorry doing the same manoeuvre — closer to a fuse box diagram than to a piece of branded artwork, in that it's a working drawing rather than anyone's design.

A specific council's route plan, or a specific manufacturer's own published swept-path diagram for one named model, is a different matter and licensable the ordinary way if that particular document is genuinely the point. A generic 0.4m reverse into a generic narrow street stays nobody's.

Isn't a technical diagram a strange thing to want on a shirt rather than a drawing of the lorry itself?

For someone whose entire working knowledge is this shape, the diagram is more specific to the job than a picture of the vehicle would be — anyone can draw a bin lorry, but knowing where the 0.4m actually falls on a given street is what a banksman gets paid to hold in their head.

The lorry itself is generic. The swept path, worked out for one particular reverse into one particular street, is the part of the job that's actually skilled.

Does it print well?

Yes — two clean curved bands and one shaded gap are simple enough shapes to survive fabric at any size, and the whole point of the drawing is legibility rather than realism.

Cream carries the bands and the figure against charcoal; one high-vis yellow marks the shaded gap itself, which keeps the eye on the clearance rather than the vehicle. Keep the 0.4M text as a hard, simple numeral rather than a technical font with fine serifs — anything below the weave's floor thickens and blurs, and a clearance figure that's gone illegible has lost the entire point of the print.

How do I get one made?

Describe your reverse at JustOG — the street, the clearance, the vehicle. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Half a metre of shaded gap, and the whole reverse depends on nobody moving it before the lorry gets there.