Rand McNally intelliRoute TND 500

Rand has been made aware of this post....

Thanks,
Mark

 

Well put Mark. I had wondered myself what was going on with the thread. I have been on the "other companies" threads and you are right their isnt all the negativity on there which is funny because i will guarantee those units have issues too! I have read several reviews before I got my unit and the TND500 faired far better than most. I used to have the Garmin 465T and returned it due to many routing issues so none of those other units are any better. At least on this thread somebody (you) is trying to fix the issues us drivers have. Thank You for that.

 

quick question..I 25 south out of Denver... "low overhead restriction"? how do I find out if this is true.. without doing it the HARD way? I had tnd set to 13' 6" and it would not allow me to do anything with it. Kept up with that warning till I got to I225 and looped back up to I 70

 

HEY BUD, I GOT A LITTLE INFO FOR YOU! No vehicles or loads greater than 13'0" are allowed on I-25 in Denver between milepost 200.11 (jct. I-225 & I-25) and milepost 213.85 (jct. I-70 & I-25). Overheight loads detour on I-225 to I-70., I-70 to I-25.


JUST WANT TO SAY THANKS FOR ALL YOU HARD WORKING TRUCKERS, ROLLIN HARD TO SUPPORT THEIR FAMILIES! GOD BLESS

 

As a student your trainer should have an MCRA. If you look in the front under Colorado and in the restricted section,,just before it lists restricted roads you will see your answer. The MCRA is cheap enough you should have one as another TOOL to do your job.

Part of a trainers job is to teach you how to use and plan routes via an MCRA. What happens if you blow a fuse and you are unable to supply power to your navigation device.

Not knowing could cost you a ticket. Use all your TOOLS that you have.

Thanks,
Mark

 

It actually will. It only looks at whether the route is marked restricted. County and city roads aren't really defined outside the main ones. All the gps units do that, though.

 

Sir, I must say that you obviously have never driven in Denver.

If you drive I-25 through Denver, you will discover that trucks are designated to travel in the middle 2 lanes ... the 2 outside lanes (both left and right are height restricted only)

How do I know ... I travel it atleast 4 -5 times a month. In fact the last time I traveled it was just last week.

Simply looking at an atlas may not give ALL the information you may need as a professional truck driver.

 

Streets & Trips. I just plug in my company supplied truck routes and final directions and it works perfect and without any bugs. Thus, I’m the captain of my ship. With the TND 500, I couldn’t plug in the company supplied truck routes and were forced to use the TND 500’s calculated routes instead. Thus, it was the captain of my ship.

Plus the routes it calculated were quite a bit longer. Then it would also reroute every time you entered a rest area, truck stop, weigh station, etc. and a lot of times tack on even more miles to your already too long routes. That is when it would route at all. Sometimes it would just say, “no available truck route.” Or the particular location wasn’t even in the database. Then you were forced to go back to manual mode. Such fun.

Anyway, I have been following my company supplied routes for years without any hassle except with a road map, pen, and paper, and now with Streets & Trips, I can just make the route match the company supplied route exactly and there was no way to customize the routes in the TND 500. Plus you can zoom in and zoom out and see all the detail you want, and you couldn’t do that with the TND 500 either.

I also added the Truck Stops Plus add-on for the POIs, and now I have a bigger and far more accurate POI database that also lets me see the various POIs while I’m driving or when I’m in trip-planning mode. I can’t explain how advantageous that is. As a matter of fact, I can plan an entire trip in a small fraction of the time that it took me to do the same thing with the TND 500, and it just works without all the constant issues you get with the TND 500.

 

Dead Fish.....Im not trying to be sarcastic but if you have company supplied routes for everything then why even use a gps? I know laptops are great to have but if you bought one and the microsoft program ONLY to match the companys routes seems like a needless expense. If i ran routes like that the ole $10 atlas and the $10 truckstop guide is all i would need. I use my TND500 cause im always going different places and need to know roads to run plus a good "eta" and places to stop im not familiar with. either way good luck to ya the same solution cant work for everyone.