Saving customer directions on your computer?

Evernote is a freeform note program. Just start saving notes and using search. Multiple notes for the same location aren't a problem, and it's easy to use many different types of notes. If you have a lot of index cards you can scan or photograph them and use tags to make them easily searchable. You can add many notes a month before you hit the end of the free useage.

A database is going to require some planning to set up fields and data types. And if you need to add another field it can be a total pain.

Saving word processing doc is more flexable than a true database but isn't as searchable as a dedicated program or a database.

A contact manager is fine for phone numbers but isn't set up to keep the amount of information I use. Even Act! doesn't have the freeform fields or a way to cross between companies.

I can't search for all the CHR loads, in either Act! or word processing docs but I can in a database or evernote.

Photos and web clips are difficult to use in the flatform database that Libre office uses and I do use a lot if them.

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I know this is a little bit off topic, but you know when you arrive at a shipper that you have never been to and the guard tells you, " What I want you to do is to drive around the first building and take a left at the second building, go into the second door to get your papers and then park your truck in the middle for the yard dog to inspect the trailer, and if it is not swept out we will kick you right out, so then you should proceed to location number 138 and slide the tandems back, drop the trailer, leave the doors open, and then go pick up the mt trailer at the third builder at spot number 92, and then park in front of the brown building, but don't open the trailer doors until the guard comes..", and after you get the papers in order but you can't remember all the directions? If you have a smart phone some of you might find an application like tape-a-talk for the Android to be of use.

 

I use Streets & Trips, as I save all my trips using the trip number plus the cities involved in a folder I created called My Trips, a subfolder called the year, i.e., 2012, and another subfolder by month, i.e., Jan, Feb, etc. That way I can simply call up the trips again and look at the way I went.

In addition, I save all my shipper locations, receiver locations, drop lot locations, and company terminal locations in Streets & Trips also. That way when I go back to them I simply right click them on the map and click add as stop.

I use Streets & Trips with the Truck Stops Plus add-on template that converts Streets & Trips to truck specific software that does truck routing and adds all the truck specific POIs you will ever need. I learned how to do all of that when I was with my trainer.

I also use Google Earth to look up all my shippers and receivers first, mark the driver entrances with pushpins, and then copy and paste the coordinates into Streets & Trips. That way Streets & Trips gives me voice-guided turn-by-turn directions right to the driver entrances of my shippers and receivers. It's a breeze and I can plan a trip in a small fraction of the time it takes to do it the manual way.