almost 2017... where's the tech?

google maps is a great app for mobile devices. why isn't there a trucker's overlay for it yet?
i'd even settle for rand mcnally to produce an app that emulates the 710/720.
are there any good truck routing apps that actually route properly?

 

I agree...Google maps are terrific. My guess is they don't want the liability? For like low bridges or weight restrictions. Like in mich, frost laws are whatever the police say it is.

 

but if anyone could do it, it would be google. given all the images and street view stuff, they'd just have to add that data. maybe a button on maps app for 'trucker mode'. let users suggest modifications (no longer a truck route, new speed limit for trucks, NY parkway, do no enter!) via feedback. live updates and traffic. however seems they have still yet to fully implement Waze. also with a real time 'speed limit' displayed. can't count the times i merge onto a highway and it is many miles before the first speed limit sign. are these 4-wheelers crazy? (yes, but are they going that fast because that's the speed limit here?) am i going to fast? don't like feeding the bears.

or, what would be even nicer is a rand mcnally app which overlays truck data on google maps.

 

It'll come in time. If they believe they can make money with it, they'll do it sooner or later. I have no idea whether they are looking at this or not. But one thing I am sure of is that you can contact them and request it. If they get enough requests for it, they'll be more likely to push a bit harder to get it developed.

 

Why dont you put together the money, open a workshop and put people to work building the trucker version online?

There are books out that detail every stinking bridge in the United States. If it was built yea high and had the correct permits etc it's in that book.

The problem I see is this.

The New hire Mr Turban given a tractor trailer and told to go into Chicago west side and deliver tomorrow. He hops into the cab and is gone in a couple minutes. No research no nothing about trip, he just wants a large green sign that says chicago.

When he gets there, there will or will not be bridges too low for him. YOU will be the first to know about it when the phone rings. Then you will have to fire Mr Turban and clean up the mess and find another source for a driver, equiptment, load etc. That is if the shipper and reciever still lets you haul for them.

No one in trucking who is new is taught the finer details about trip planning. They are whipped through school with one goal. Pass a state test for CDL. That's it. No more. No less and everything else is hearsay.

You would not let a 40 year old man come out of flight school bupkis on 60 hours in a small plane, hand him licenses to a 747-400 with a route from DC to Singapore overnight with 400 souls.

But taht is exactly what we are doing to newbies who enslave themselves to debt tot he Government in hopes of making the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in a few weeks thanks to the incessant marketing bull that floods all newspapers and billboards around the USA.

You tell me who is responsible for the mess? Not the newbie, he or she is too stupid to understand that there is a insitutional, if not national lack of training.

 

In fairness, few new drivers think that there is a pot of gold waiting. Most are simply desperate and broke, and doing what they think that they have to, because they've run out of other options.

There is blame enough to go around, but you know, not everyone is stupid. Some are desperate, or poorly trained... or self-righteous. It is perhaps not necessary to degrade people for trying to get a job and work for a living, whatever the challenges and obstacles in the way. Would you prefer the alternative? All those people on welfare, instead of on the road?

 

I am on disability after decades on the road, wear and tear. I don't like it but the alternative is really impossible. I prefer people not be desperate to go trucking, the Nation needs truckers. But because of the systematic problems that are never solved, the Nation's Trucking Companies are prepared to or are preparing TO ELIMINATE People from driving. Use robot trucks.

These forums have thousands of posts from people who show up at Orientation in trucking with 20 dollars in the pocket, fail badly and are shipped home. I cannot help them For every 100 who wanna drive truck for whatever reason in life, good or bad, maybe 10 make it the first year. 4 of that will be around or living in 10-.

At that point in a near future, trucking will no longer be an option for desperate people or those who feel that there is a noble occupation to be running freight to keep America going. People have been on welfare for so long and take in so much on the dole that it is literally very profitable for them to stay put on it and make more babies to bring in more money. All these illegals are in our local DHS office getting ready to have babies with 5 more gathered around their hips while they wait to meet with case worker for this and that. Our own supposed sancurary cities and a failure to enforce alien laws disenfranchise the millions who did come here WANTING the LEGAL way to become American Citizens. And hundreds around the USA take the Oath regularly after about 6 years or so hard work.

When drivers are broke, they starve and cannot continue. If the trucking company deliberately go against established case law and eliminate the bad trucker by starvation via no miles or very little miles each week and get caught via evidence doing so (As two were in my life time and both were convicted and I recieved unemployment after my savings ran out after weeks of enduring deliberate mistreatment... myself)

Finally I respectfully ask this. What options are there left? If you examine the Hearst Pictures stored in the Baltimore Sun Newspaper in Baltimore Maryland going back from around 1759 all the way to as recent as my own lifetime growing up downtown in the mid 80's and even in the 2000's watching industry get demolished and replaced with high priced condos to enrich a very few people rather than put 2 million people to work every day. The 870,000 according to census that remain in the city are themselves trapped by poverty and unable to emigrate.

Beth steel, a source of 30 dollar and beyond work for those who wanted it like myself was demo'ed this year and condos are going up in it's place by next year. Poof. All gone.

What then? Nothing. Soon Trucks are robots and have nothing for a desperate or motivated society. It would be better to purchase 100 trucks as robots and hire them out online to people who ask and pay for them instantly. You no longer really need a office building full of employees to process the payroll etc. Poof all gone.

Thus the so called desperate option is itself destroyed by technology Sir.

 

Drivers are doing that to themselves every single day. You have so many drivers with things like 'Lane Departure Warning' installed and they happily drive it. The tech companies know that this is not perfected enough for mainstream use, but here they have actual drivers doing the testing for them. So the drivers hold all the blame when something happens and the tech companies get to sit back and tinker with their new gimmick without taking any risks. That's an excellent situation for them. Same goes with the auto-stopping or whatever.

Even things like Truckers Path - that's free and really useful - is just a data miner. Where do drivers go? What routes do the gals/guys in the seat take? This is all collected and used to improve self-driving tech. When drivers report a wrong address or speed limit on their GPS of whatever make, it's the same thing.

So you have all these companies laying all the responsibility on the drivers who are working their way out of jobs. That's just the way it is.

 

In my opinion, we do that starting in grade school. You learn just enough to pass the state tests. But what's on the state tests?
Nothing I should have been taught before going out on my own.
I.e. how use a credit card.
How to understand my credit.
How to be financially savvy with money.
How to buy a car.
How to buy a big investment like a house.
The list goes on an on. And it doesn't just deal with money.

Don't say that that is the parents full responsibility either. Aside from the fact my parents failed to know how to do a lot of my examples too, they also lived pay check to pay check. My habits stemmed from what I was taught as a child.
I hold onto one thing my parents taught me, hard work pays the bills.

I read a long time ago and can't find the source but maybe someone knows what I'm talking about,

Indian tribes as a whole took the responsibility of teaching the children, the boys followed the men and learned how to be a man.
The girls followed the women and learned how to be a woman.

Along the line of history, we got away from our roots, and left to task of raising children to two people. Sometimes only one person, some times no one wanted that burden.

We now live in communities where no one is responsible to anyone.

I think some people are completely successful at teaching their kids everything. Kudos to them. In this day and age though, we are falling farther and farther from where we should.

 

Here on TTR, there always seems to be a couple of members that blame the new drivers for making the industry what it is. Lest they forget that, the blame should fall on the 15,20,30 year veteran truckers that let it go down the drain many many years ago before it got this way.

So nowadays, we've got the retired ones singing the old ways, the old ones still chugging along blaming everybody else, and the new ones destroying the industry.

That pretty much covers it.