Autistic trucker reveals his ‘Iron Man mind map’ of UK roads he uses instead of sat nav

An autistic trucker has given an insight into his ‘mind map’ that works better than a sat nav as he navigates Britain’s road network.

Stuart Harvey, 29, has a thought process that he likens to Marvel’s Iron Man mask as he plots routes around hazards and congested routes.

The HGV driver overcame mockery at school to land his dream job as a trucker and is now keen to speak up for underrepresented autistic people, who he believes are well-suited to haulage work.

Stuart, who has high-level Asperger’s, is among a rare pool of people with the developmental condition simply for being employed. Figures from the Office for National Statistics released a year ago show that just 22% of autistic adults are in work – the lowest rate of any group of disabled people.

Speaking from his cab before a shift, Stuart explained that neurodiversity can be an advantage when he is faced with finding the quickest routes on his 11-hour night shifts across the country.

‘The best way to describe it is during the film Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr,’ he said. ‘It’s like when he puts on the mask.

‘When he looks through it and all the labels come up; there’s a car over there, there’s a door over there or a piece of dirt on the floor.

‘It can almost literally be like that. Things jump out at me and that’s essentially how I process it.

‘All this information is streaming in and I have got to try and work out what’s important and what isn’t. It’s almost like a priorities list.’

The haulier, from Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, has Google Maps on his phone in the cab but finds he can process the routes better in his mind.

‘It’s a sat nav, but it’s a sat nav that can think for itself,’ he said.

‘I know that’s going to sound awfully weird and crazy but actually it’s not that far from the truth. When I’m on my route usually there’s a certain section of road where I know it forks and I can go point A or point B.

‘In the background I’ll have Google Maps on and it will monitor traffic levels with the different coloured lines; green’s ok, yellow might have a problem and red is completely clogged. That’s the way my brain is thinking.’

The driver was laughed at in primary school when he told his class of his ambition after seeing bin trucks in his street as a child.

Today, he was setting off on a night shift across the UK in his seven-tonne, articulated lorry, named Road Runner.

Stuart believes that the key to solving the recruitment crisis in the haulage industry is for the government to overhaul education, focusing on the shortage of vocational skills.

‘Education for me wasn’t the way forward,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t wait to get out into the world of work, so the way I dealt with things in school, I said to myself, “I know what I’m doing with my life, do you know what you’re doing with your life?”.

‘It was always a question of putting the question back onto the other people, it was the way of dealing with bullies.’

In October, the government drafted in the Army and RAF to resupply petrol stations due to a shortage of HGV drivers, which Stuart views as the legacy of an industry that has long needed more support to encourage younger people into its ranks.

‘Education in the workplace is definitely the way forward,’ he said. ‘The whole education system needs to be overhauled.

‘Even from when I was at school in the 90s, everything was about going to college, going to university, nobody was being encouraged to do practical jobs. No one was being encouraged to be, let’s say, lorry drivers.

‘Essentially we are now seeing the backlog of that because we have got a whole generation of people who think that being a lorry driver is an incredibly boring and not very nice job.’

Autism, where people find it hard to communicate with others or struggle with unfamiliar situations, has been a help not a hindrance to Stuart as he avoids hold-ups in his tractor unit.

Yet he has never known of another trucker with the condition.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually a very autistic friendly industry,’ the night owl said. ‘They are very focused people. I have always had the problem in the past where people have called me up and they have said, “when are you going to get the delivery to X,Y or Z?”. My response has always been, “when I get it there, now please leave me alone”.’

The government has said it is taking ‘numerous’ steps to support new HGV drivers into the industry, including ‘streamlining’ the recruitment process.

A spokesperson said: ‘Through our Plan for Jobs we’re helping people across the UK retrain, build new skills and get back into work.‘

Stuart, however, found his own way into the driving seat and has been in the industry for three years despite facing discrimination.

‘I have had one of those upbringings to say that my parents drummed into me from a very early age that you have got to go out there and get things,’ he said. ‘If you want something in life you’ve got to be able to go out and earn it. Essentially I knew where my strengths lay and it’s been a long road to get here, but now I’ve got here.’

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