Drivers, why are we using GPS units?

I just do not see the point in spending all that money on a GPS--if you really need it--most truckstops have that demo set up--just punch in what you need and write it down--and if you are at PFLYIN Hookylot---you'll still have time to get coffe while you are waitn in line

 

It gives ya another female to argue with...

 

Same thing pops up in Jax,Fl. for the same reason. Surely someone with a BA could figure these things out.

 

My Rand is only a month old (my $10 garage sale Tom Tom finally died after 3.5 years). I love having a GPS and google maps but this old fart ignores the Rand at least half the time because it's wrong or takes me on a longer route. There is something to be said for experience. That having been said, I think it's foolish not to use every tool I can reasonably afford to make my job and life easier. I don't miss truck stop pay phones or calling receivers that can't always tell you how to get to where they work accurately. I still usually call but take their directions with a grain of salt.

 

Thank all the idiot drivers who have hit those bridges on the shoulder over the years. As a PA taxpayer who bears the cost of fixing them, I personally hope PA never changes those signs.

 

That's funny right there. In what century did we have hand cranked pumps? Must have been before there was electricity throughout the country and the cash you speak of was confederate money.

 

they were still in use in to the 60s at some mom/pop style gas stations. It was still an innovation, just like power steering.

I'm sure some of the salty old timers hated power steering saying "something else to break on the truck" regardless now its on all of them and i bet its something you would't want to lose at this point. Its the same idea, use the tools, bu do not blame the tool because you cannot get it to work how you want it to.

 

What was still an innovation? electric fuel pumps? You must be thinking about kerosene pumps. And I promise you nobody complained about getting power steering. I sure didn't, and it hasn't been considered standard equipment as long as you might imagine. Even in the late 80s plenty of company trucks didn't have it yet.

I love how a student knows so much about something that he(or she) has it all figured out and is trying to school a veteran. After you have actually driven a few years you won't be relying so much on your GPS because hopefully you will know where you are going based on your acquired knowledge of the road.

 

i NEVER said only rely on it, i simply said it is another tool, and not using any tool that could make you more productive is stupid. Here is another way o thinking about it, before there was the trucker atlas you had to have maps for each state, then they nade the atlas which was a great new tool, a GPS is just the next updated tool.

 

A GPS is a computer. Computers are only as smart as the people who work them. Fine its a tool. I guess I am stupid because I don't use it. Fine I'm stupid. But I was smart enough to learn to read a map. I can name every interstate in this country and start and ending points, without looking it up. Once I seep a map I can recall that same image in my head and have a perfect photographic memory of it. I can tell you the length law in each state where most of the scales and rest areas are and how to use the pa state highways to navigate in case you get lost. Yeah I guess I am stupid, and I guess I use GPS, the one in my head.