Rookie drivers: Buy and study and atlas!

I'm about to show my age. When I started out in this buisness there was no such thing as a GPS. I had an atlas and that was about it. I had to learn to route myself or drive a lot more than I should.

Technology is great. I have a GPS and a smart phone. I even have Sirius radio and an Ipad. But it can also make you stupid. I don't know how many times I have had to show a driver how to use a map. Map reading should be taught in every trucking school.

 

Swift teaches it. No telling what the students do with the information later. Probably trained out of them by lazy mentors who swear by GPS's.

 

This picture was taken off of a news article last year. It's some where in Wyoming! Good proof that when you have done the GPS toy programing and then matched it up with a real paper map so that this doesn't happen ! OR the turn onto a railroad track or snow mobile trails and even into Death Valley which almost killed the young mother and her baby! VERIFY any programmable route before you blindly commit to it!

 

Probably so.

 

I have started seening alot of city's and towns putting similar signs like that.

 

I'm still trying to figure out how I survived before the "digital" age.:smt102

 

I spent my first two months solo using only an Atlas. Now I use both, every time. Often, the GPS has saved my ### quickly routing around traffic, and also, has shaved 10- 40 miles off most dispatches, which really helps with monthly MPG. It will map by weight, haz-mat, interstate, back road, and lots of other options. Don't be deceived, the Atlas can be wrong too. Can the GPS be wrong? U bet. Both are tools available to the driver. If you choose to not use one or the other, so be it, but you are only cheating yourself. We used to talk on two cans and a string, but the phone sure is nice....both work.

 

Well as the old saying goes its the new breed of drivers but this time they are right. Not to many people come out here to be truck drivers anymore they are casualties of the recession and companies moving over seas. The quality of drivers is at its lowest. Cant read a map/cant back up/cant turn a corner without jumping a curb. My favorite a PRIME driver left the rest area and never released his trailer brake and was wondering why i flagged him over he made it a whole 2 mile b4 i got him to stop

 

when i was all over the country in a pu with a gn trailer i used a gps for about the last 2 of my 6 years it was a great tool acualy saved me alot of miles you could glance at it and know exactly how meany miles to your next turn always checked the route against a paper map to verifybefore leaving but i thought it was a great tool. the best part about it is not having to refrerance a paper map or a list of notes when driving down the road or thinking to yourself "did i miss that turn or not" even though im a younger guy i tent to resist going to newer technology heak i still dont use a smart phone. but when i started using the gps made my life alot simpler. with my current work in the oilfeild a gps is about as usless as tits on a boar. so are the dispacters directions..lol 100% paper maps after i first week in the oil feild i gave up on the gps and put it away as meany roads were not even reconized by the gps or a trucker atles for that matter ended up getting some local maps that show all the county roads and such and then as i go to new sites and locations i use a pen and map out lease roads and also mark wellsite locations on the map.

i did have a funny experiance a couple months back where i pull onto a lease road and there is a semi stopped in the road so i stop behind him to wait for him to move and he comes out of his truck holding a map upside down and comes up to my truck asking how to get to a place his boss had marked on the map for him. he looked at me dumbfounded when i told him that he had missed his turn by almost 10 miles

 

I saw a sign as I was pulling out of a shipper in North Carolina that said

"Truckers check your map, your GPS will tell you to go this way, IT IS WRONG !!!! Low Bridge ahead 2 miles"

This was an actual county/city road sign, which is a good thing cause my GPS had me going that way, I did how ever already know this cause I did check my map prior to leaving the shipper... Always check a map...and if your too lazy, at least pay attention to the signs posted.... You will have a Hell of a time backing up a twisting 2 lane road for 2 miles because you thought the GPS was 100%