Had to call the cops today

I admit the majority of my drips are repeats but I am new to Houston so I had to learn them all fresh. But there is so much new construction that isn't on GPS yet but idk, I'm not going to call the customer unless I need to. That's just me. I probably call customers 50% of the time because we'll you have to but I'm not going to call them for the sake of calling them every single time.

Part of the reason why I'm good at my job is because I figure #### out, I trouble shoot and find a way to get the job done. Yes I'm all for using supports that are available but I'm not going to be reliant on other people.

But I'm just arguing over semantics at this point ciz I'm bored since everyone is sleeping.

I don't even have a truck GPS but I avoid tickets by following signs, if there is a sign that says no trucks, I don't go down that road, to me that was what I was talking about, when having common sense.

I don't need a GPS or customer to tell me every move. Not trying to pick on you Hurst, just used your post to rant on.

 

Smart drivers don't use a GPS to tell them how to get to where they are going.... It is simply a way to keep track of distance, upcoming scale's, upcoming construction, upcoming turns, upcoming rest stops and Truck Stops. It is a tool, nothing more... For me it is best used for finding a street at night, when you can't see the sign. I carry a Rand McNally map and phone numbers. I will call the customer, if I haven't been there before to verify how early I can arrive, and to see if there is over night parking.

 

Good point Skate-Board

 

Went to a produce market in Boston don't remember exactly where cause I was pisses about taking a rejected pallet of tomatoes there in the first place anyway I'm almost thee big sign says trucks turn right here for market . I look thinking I can't make that turn but being new I said why would they put that sign up if I can't . well I couldn't was no way the trailer was gonna clear the pole on the corner so now I'm trying to back into traffic at 5 in the evening luckily a cop showed up and helped me get out . told me to go to a roundabout come back and make a left. Easy enough but I had to ask why is that sign there he said . I don't make the #### signs do what I told you before you get a ticket. Yes sir have a nice day.


Next morning I'm leaving there's a truck trying to make the same turn I was at told him about going to the roundabout to come back and make a left to which he replied I'll get around this #### corner I didn't get my license yesterday. He got around it with 2 flats and a huge dent in the right side of his trailer . I heard both of his trailer tires blow as he drug them across that pole

 

Not the driver's fault. They must have been re-caps.

 

yep had nothing to do with slamming the side of his trailer, his tires and wheels into a concrete pole and then proceeding to drag them along it anyway

 

Glad I saw this post, as most of my driving has been in extended vans and 26' straight trucks. It was bad enough to turn on some street in the truck before spotting the only sign for that street announcing "no trucks" then having some fun finding a spot to turn around. I can imagine how screwed it feels to get in a situation with a semi and have to get out.
sliding from call cops for directions to getting there on your own>>. I used to carry around a collection of county level maps for the regions I traveled in most. It was one of my things to look at the map section where I got gas to see if they had one better than my current version. Also used the Gazeteer map books, which I guess are geared towards recreation. The one thing they lack vs. the county maps is a street index. In a pinch, I would stop when I got to the destination town and look at the map in a phone book. Did a fair amount of construction deliveries and maps and GPS weren't showing the new streets yet, so occasionally a quick stop at the Post office, or PD, or yeh, calling the delivery would have to happen. I know how to read a map either from growing up in a metro area, flying, or doing the Boy Scout thing. When I was working in the office, I instituted a map test to see if new drivers knew how to read one. Many couldn't (I remember one friend said she'd grown up in a small town and knew where everything was, so she never had to learn). When the GPS came along, I think it put new drivers who never went through the map reading stage at a disadvantage They didn't have any sense of looking at the overal route/picture and thinking if there was a better way to go due to weather, traffic, detour, no trains etc. They "lemminged" the directions that the GPS spit out and it would bite 'em once in a while.

My first GPS was a slick little 3.5" that spoke streets (at the expense of 5 of the 6M waypoints to make room in memory over the non-speaker. The feature I miss the most was the ability to put in multiple waypoints or a route. It was made by Mio which has been bought by Garmin or Magellan, forget which. I could put in multiple stops and let it order it or I could push them up or down in the order and instantly compare the difference because it told me est time and dist/ttl time/ ttl dist to each stop. If I didn't wan't to go thru Chicago on my way from Indiana to Wisconsin, I would just add a waypoint by touching the map somewhere on the bypass highway (294), which usually forced it to reroute and go that way. It didn't have traffic, or lane guidance pics or photo realistic junctions and eventually I had to stop using it because it couldn't be updated past 2007. The replacement let me put in a multipoint trip, but I could never see the overal trip, just the info for the next point. 2 years ago, when the company dumped their push-to-talk phones got Galaxy S 3s I started using Google Maps to get around. It had some traffic info and you could pull up street view for the destination or satellite view so you could see the building and guess ahead of time where access, the docks or parking was. If I suspected a botched address from dispatch or couldn't guess how the GPS wanted a rural highway or grid address put in, I could sometimes just look the company up and then punch "directions". Another app, Waze was good for traffic and specific incident info as the info was from driver reports and tracking data. Google bought them a while back. The biggest weakness is when you're out of the cell covereage area, it becomes semi-worthless. Not sure if there was a method to download detailed info for the entire route so it could be read offline or not.

I still have some reading to do over in the Navigation section because I'm probably going to end up in the Permian Basin and may be driving in the sticks and going off road at times. I need a dedicated GPS with a "breadcrumb" feature or tracking, so I can record the first time I go to a well that's a few miles off the county road with several turns and fence gates to negotiate. There are some phone apps that do that, but only when connected to the network, I think.

 

yep, that's the ticket