The Truck Acts were a series of laws passed in the United Kingdom designed to prohibit the “truck system,” where employers paid workers either wholly or partly in goods, tokens, or vouchers instead of legal currency. This system was often abused, forcing workers to accept goods at inflated prices from company-owned stores, which could trap them into dependency on their employer.
The first major Truck Act was passed in 1725 (also known as the Woollen Manufactures Act 1725) but it was the 1831 Act that is considered to be especially significant, repealing previous Truck Acts and extending protections against payment in kind to many trades.
Subsequent amendments (1887, 1896 and 1940) further refined these provisions, but the 1831 Act remains the foundational legal protection against wage payment exploitation in the UK.