TruckerPath as a truck GPS, is it worth it?

We dont care about parking so I didn’t mention it because we don’t use it. I drive days she drives nights and we cant stop for extended times or the DOD traffic monitoring desk will want to know why.


The TRUCK GPS features of Trucker Path are on par or better than Garmin or Rand McNally. As long as you don’t use your GPS as a crutch and do your job route planning any of them are fine. Pick the one you like best.


FWIW I have yet to see TP wrong about a weigh station be closed or open

 

Yes, I couldn’t team with anyone else. My wife is solid behind the wheel at night and I sleep like a baby

 

My experience with the weigh stations has been the complete opposite as well. Shouldn't matter whether it's open or not TBH. TP is garbage made for novice drivers.

 

What truck GPS is your preference?

 

I don't use it much really but the times that I do, I use Google Maps with it's satelite and street view. A good Rand McNally coupled with street/satellite view can't be beat. No GPS can ever compete. Route planning is CDL 101 IMO.

 

There are drivers on this forum that prefer each truck GPS. NEITHER RM nor Garmin are going to replace your need for trip planning and route selection and reading the state-specific pages in the Rand-McNally Motor Carrier Road Atlas (MCRA) for low bridges, truck-restricted routes. IMO, it is best to use whichever one your trainer uses only because you will see how he manipulated the controls and entered his choices, which was about 90% of the difficulty you will have to learn, no matter which device you choose.

I've already explained of the 2 devices, I loved my RM but it felt like it was made of wrapping paper, they stopped updating the maps 1 year after it was new while advertising free lifetime updates. I pampered the RM more than 90% of drivers and got it to just barely last almost 5 years when the typical experience was dead by 2 years old. I put a redneck sunshield over the device at all times. I never left it plugged into power or turned on when I slept, and mounted it assuming so it had a surface to sit upon and the magnetic mount. It would fall off the magnetic mount if I ran over a dead leaf. Garmin's screen was much brighter, higher resolution, still getting updates, stronger magnetic mount. I found the user interface, since I had maybe 2 months experience using it to be less adaptable or harder for me to make it do what I wanted it to do and my RM had been doing. It's likely that difficulty I had using it was entirely because the difficulty I had learning the RM was 4 years in the past and the Garmin's difficulty was happening now.

At the end of my trucking life I learned from drivers on the forum how to use Google Maps and Satellite view to locate the truck entrance for a customer, "drop a pin" in Google which generates a Lat/Long set of coordinates. I enter those coordinates into the GPS (either make) and navigate to that spot rather than entering the street address into the GPS and hoping for the best. I ran a lot out West and was SLC hundreds of times. SLC is growing and expanding at a blinding speed. There are lots of brand new streets not even listed in the RM database. Some of those streets are not mentioned, many of those streets only recognize house numbers between a certain range while the customer house number is well above that range. With the RM, A Vine St, Vine Blvd, Vine Terrace, Vine Way are all different streets and not every address given to me made any such distinction. However, entering the Lat/Long coordinates usually overcame most confusion except when the GPS recognized those coordinates as in an empty field, pond, or another building.

Some drivers prefer to build the full route and particular stopping points along the way (truck stop, rest area, restaurant). Some drivers build the route only entering the start and end points and then add intermediate stops along the way or just ignore the GPS as you steer off the route into a stopping point along the way. New drivers seem to over-rely on whatever piece of electronic device they have and expect to just be a paid robot for the electronic brain. That will eat your lunch at the worst possible moment, guaranteed. Not every change in the world makes it to the GPS database providers. Not every obstruction, low bridge, and truck-restricted route makes it into the database update. So even if you do actually receive free lifetime updates, not just a year's worth and then nothing but frequent updates to the GPS operating system and unused ELD utility, it will not keep you out of trouble.

I'm cheap. Both of my $400+ truck 7 inch GPS devices were bought using reward points, not cash. I would highly recommend to watch YouTube videos of actual truck drivers using their RM or Garmin GPS. Each manufacturer has how-to videos on the company web site and YouTube. Those can help shorten the learning period you will have no matter which device you buy. No matter which device you use you will be hearing drivers claiming they hate their device and wish they had bought the other device and drivers of that "other device" claiming they hate their device and should have bought the other device. You have to listen very carefully to praise and complaints to understand what is being said and if it applies to you or not. Truck drivers, myself included, will rant and rant about a detail of something that 99% of other drivers wouldn't even notice as a problem, or maybe view as a benefit.

IMO, you simply must own and use the RM MCRA book, what drivers used instead of a GPS before GPS was around. You simply must learn to use Google Street-view to view the last mile to a customer. You simply must learn how to use Google reviews to find truck entrances and not the mailbox where the receptionist sits at the front door. You simply must learn to find customer info by both street address and company name because companies buy companies every day of the week and sometimes it takes years before people, drivers, reviewers, brokers, dispatchers, load planners, internet sources start using the new name for the company instead of the name written on your BOL or messaging system.

Either GPS is going to have a particular error or mistake you will see 10 times more than any other error on that machine. For my RM-740 years ago, most common error was displaying the incorrect speed limit for the road I was driving, especially city streets. The next most common mistake, which was rare but disturbing when it happens, it will say and display "enter/exit Interstate I-65 to the Left" but the road entrance/exit/ramp is clearly on the other side than the GPS thinks. This was at specific locations every time I was at that location. It was always obvious the GPS was incorrect due to the size and volume of the entrance/exit/ramp and traffic. When I ran HazMat the RM GPS has a setting to use or not use that would check for HazMat routes, not the state & federal designated routes necessarily, but the local streets which may allow or prohibit HM trucks. That feature was correct only about 60-75% of the time. A feature of the RM-740 was the GPS effectively stopped showing route progress and voice navigation once it determined you were over-weight, over-width, overlength, HM restricted route. It showed only a grey full screen saying something like HazMat/overweight not allowed. The only way I could continue to use the GPS on that misidentified restricted route was to manipulate the GPS settings for my vehicle, sometimes while driving. Once I became familiar with the non-existent but announced HazMat restriction on I-285 around the top of Atlanta or on the local street with a regular customer I would turn off the HM or weight feature of the GPS. The point is both makers' devices will make certain mistakes and until you learn those mistakes and which possible mistakes it almost never makes the GPS will not only be a helper but a source of anxiety and unnecessary tension. This cannot be avoided by buying or using the right device or the right GPS app. Each of those will have their set of problems the others do not. Sorry for the wall of text. I'm trying to help. It felt like a big decision to me because of the "money" I was spending.