Can’t afford the GPS...

We used rand with GPS that was 50 dollars with the CD's and Gps reciever out of a Pilot back in about 1998 or so. When lloaded into a laptop we had just got suddenly we had a world of data in the USA down to alley level if necessary. With a dailup card slot and a phone line you could update online, buying a annual staples or office depot business phone number 800 directory listings for the entire USA then in use allowed us to call people dispatchers never gave us numbers to. (HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET THIS NUMBER DRIVER?! WE DO NOT SPECIFICALLY LET YOUR STUPID DISPATCHER GIVE THIS NUMBER OUT!.. relax, chill. It's a 10 dollar DVD that gave your physicall address and a phone number for directions...)

Rand mcnally truckers atlas always. Then additional books on maps with topo information as needed. I remember spending 200 dollars on a complete map series on the entire 5 boroughs of NYC because that was where I ran loads into. A certain amount of time and battle planning before we hit the GWB or the Verrazano to get into there to deliver was necesssary on paper. This was before the internet.

My mobile phone has the same computer internet and google stuff I have here on my table with the computer I built over time. We just completed a custom routing for our doctor that does not include our freeways which is being rebuilt and replaced for I-57 within about 7 years due to about 1200 dollars endured in losses and damaged directly related to potholing just this year. Plus a few thousand more in losses related to a aging car and failing engine electronics etc. All of that was not only fixed but paid off. Sometimes we ate a can of soup because the money went to pay off that debt. But we are still here. That new route worked out well.

There was alot of telephone communications back in the day, a good cell phone was valuable in calling your customers. Once you knew who, where they are, how to get into and out of them, and so on you made sure you never forgot it. You write everything down including low bridges etc.

When I encountered a low bridge when my antennas at 13.5 says it wont make it I back off and call the local police to come get me out of there. Generally by corralling traffic enough for me to get turned around. After the necessary teasing, laughing and a little bullying for being too stupid about that bridge with that big truck, they show us the right route out and around to where we are going and chances are if we learned, we never saw them again.

Once in a while on the west coast inside san diego, LA, or Silicon Valley etc. All buildings look the same and NOTHING ON ANY OF THEM (Address numbers, company names etc nothing at all. So what we learned to do was find a local police man who possessed a special three ring binder used to identifly which of those buildings contained the company that is supposed to recieve our very expensive loads in the back of the truck. We learned many times we had gotten to within a few blocks and the officer would be more than happy to say that building see you later. (They were into pretty heavy security I suppose when they had to be, filled with Pentium III CPU Chips which would have been worth quite a bunch of money on Ebay pretty quickly back then. (Before there was a craigslist)

Once in a while when we absolutely could not find a #### thing about where we are supposed to go with a big truck, sometimes we parked in a legal spot while one of us spouses got out and started talking to people for a few blocks around us until lo and behold there they were. (Again not far from us...) however there are certain towns like Camden NJ or east Philly you don't expose yourself like that. If you are in there with a big truck with nothing that takes big trucks, you have a problem. Call the law and say you are lost. They will get you out of there before you got to be a statistic or a victim really quickly. One police man deposited me in a deli for 12 hours after I broke down in east philly once, and told me if I valued my life I will stay there and wait for him. We were able to overcome that breakdown that day, but it was a very very long dangerous day inside Philly. In short as a trucker I had value to Philly in some ways much more than the doper or drug dealer etc. So they knew to invest time and effort to help get me and my truck out of there. (Before it got stripped etc)

For us, the satellite communciations for me personally as a deaf man was the one breakthrough about the 1993 year onwards. Many things became very possible with that one device where it would have been very difficult otherwise.

I did not realize then how much of a sort of a enforcement tool to keep drivers in line with computers filling those trucks beeping at you when a car (Us) are next to your right steer. We learned to back off a few mph quickly and get rid of you so you can pass fast and not get road rage from that incessant BEEP BEEP BEEP because you are against the governor trying to pass on a 75 mph highway. If you aint got the horses to back it up, stay in the rocking chair or in the caboose. You will get there eventually.

Im sorry that you are being crushed by the weight of child support etc. You are essentially bankrupt. And will be for as long that child lives until 18. That too will happen sometime. Then you can be rid of that gold digging ex.

Maybe if you abandoned trucking and worked at can you get fries with that making 8000 a year and have nothing much for child support that would be one work around. When the child makes it to adulthood and out of the system and no more of that, you can go ahead and get back to running your stacks of money. Who knows what is possible.

When I was in late elementry school a counsler asked me what I will be doing when I graduated high school. I told him instantly a trucker. He looked at me and said you will starve.

I have starved. I have also seen prosperity and everything in between. I could not then as a child imagine being past 50 in battle medically with a failing body. But that too shall pass. Death is not that difficult. But not just yet. We still have things we must live to do because others need me. So. There is that. Flat broke and fat and happy because we are doing ok. Money is a necessary evil in this life. Im essentially BK myself. But I am using the system on it's own laws to where I can solve these problems over time. And I am doing it. It's not that great sometimes but hey... We are still here and kicking.

If in today's world with all that internet, mapping, phone numbers and mountains of resources equal to a essential depositry of all human knowledge cannot help you find where Unicorn INC. Is located on neverland route 666 then I think there is someone in dispatch pulling a fast one on you. At that point you are to stop right where you are and call your company and make sure they understand you will NOT move one inch further into more trouble until you have information in hand that is VALID, accurate and safe for you and your rig.

Otherwise take that load right back to to that shipper. Let the yelling begin.

There's been a few times we did that too. We are not about to smash up our truck on low bridges or trouble alleys trying to get into places that really are not supposed to take a big truck anyway. We had several customers where we delivered to, but ripped the doors badly getting out, destroying whatever profit there was at all on that stupid run. (We would usually never run that load ever again.)

Wherever you have trouble like for us Dumfries scales south of DC combined with the mixing bowl traffic jams that combined with the sheer aggression shown by all in the Capital beltway makes things very very dangerous. We simply bypass the entire city on US 15 or US 301. Our dispatch screams OUT OF ROUTE what are you doing? We tell them bill us the fuel. We rather pay that than have to call you and say we got a stack of tickets or killed 3 cars on that beltway because people got mad at our governor speed.

Sometimes we bypass a entire state. Might take a little bit longer to get there with a little more driving, but its so much better to do that than to go through it. I-70 between St Louis and PA turnpike comes to mind. We quit using it. We will come in via Kentucky instead. It's the same amount of time. especially if you had the horses to run Sandstone over.

Trucking has challenges. Not everyone can do it. If you have had enough of it, get out of it and find something you enjoy doing. Otherwise you are hurting yourself.

 

My magellan 5370-T roadmate (commercial) is either finally crapping out after 4 years of great service. (Got it using fuel points at Kingman T/A) OR just the power cable needs replacing.

2) So, i got another magellan with dash cam; Will give a review soon. Note, this is not a commercial unit though.

3) However, i forgot to bring it with me all last week (am on a temporary P+D assignment). My only option was to use google maps on phone.

The Google maps on phone works well; Just be aware that it is not intended for commercial vehicles, so all signs, bridges that may appear too low must be approached and handled with caution. Not too much different from using a non-truck GPS unit.

 

When I first started driving, I would pop in place that I knew had truck maps for sale. I would plan my route from the store and write everything down on paper. Sometimes I would call to shipper/Receiver to double check my route too. No cell phones, no GPS just pure desperation got me to my destination. Where have we gone astray? Seems nobody wants to do anything for themselves and are always looking for an easy way out or have somebody else do their leg work. We won't last much longer with this trend of behavior. Remember burning Rome.

 

Hey, I'm old, but not that old!

You are watching the decline of a civilization, the global village, descending into chaos.
Lets hope MY President can keep the US out of the drain.

 

I think we are heading into more trouble than not.

Even so, if you are steady and do things well for yourself and yours and try to stay out of the chaos you will do better. Keep in mind it is not good to give a person themselves over to emotional things that are like a storm that passes after a time and does nothing but cause damage.

Hang in there, you will be ok.

Commuter rails have gotten very common after we got out once Frederick and Point of Rocks was rebuilt through Weverton Tower I believe towards DC so they could get to work downtown ASAP. Ive always had to worry about those tracks, because even back in the 50's stories of 80 mph passenger trains blasting through there is common. And under steam they aint stopping for nothing. (They can't, until give about 3 miles notice via distant signaling.)

I hear about the French's 300 mph trains under electric. To understand two engines feeding off overhead at those speeds the pantographs must fly a certain distance close enough to still "Feed on the juice" off those wires above. We have nothing like that here. It would take too much to build a world where that is possible right now.

When I run the west I think about the Pioneers who went out there or bust. Sometimes they did not make it at all. Someone said there is around 10 graves per mile in many areas out west on or near the old trails. Just for trying to make a new life.

We'll be ok, just need to avoid the unnecessary waste from yourself and yours where possible.

 

I took a load of steel to a construction site in San Fran. Shipper gave me Mapquest directions. Can't make the right hand turn off the freeway in a semi.

Call for directions. Can't do that. The boys working the site were from the other side of the country. So they have no clue where you're at or where to go.

I turned left looking for a way to go around the block and get to the site. Went as far as i dared go trying to find some streets i could use. Called 911. They sent 3 city officers. Used that intersection to get turned around and to the site.

Todays world of trucking really isn't the same as yesterdays world. It was challenging back then. Different challenges today.

 

Don't be dense. In the days before GPS was common receivers were used to giving directions. These days, some places have an option for directions in their phone menu. Some places you can't call and get ahold of anyone. At all. Some places you get a floozy receptionist who knows how to get there from her house but can't give you street names or exit numbers or anything like that. Might not even know where the truck entrance is.

Local maps? Ten or so years ago (a little less perhaps) I planned a trip from California to New Mexico. POV. Got it all planned out, knew where I had to go to get to where I needed to be including a couple stops. Until I hit a city, El Paso perhaps? And the freeway was closed. Signs said to take some bypass but no signs telling you got to get to said detour. I hit ten different gas stations trying to get a map of the area. Finally got someone who was familiar with the area and what was shut down and could give me directions in English. Never got that local map.

Today it's even worse.

Folks bemoan the lack of use of paper maps but get mad at people using digital maps that are readily available and have far more information. Plenty of drivers using new technology, and are perfectly capable of using the old if needed, but the old is disappearing.

@JReding , I've done fine with a phone with Google maps an an occasional reference to an atlas at times when my GPS was stolen or not working. You'll do fine if you pay attention.

 

Reminds me of a trip i took going from seattle to san diego. Got in to L.A. and i had to jump off the freeway 4 times. Because of construction closures.

This was at night.

Thank goodness for gps.

Although i started the old fashioned way. Gps didn't exist then. I wouldn't dream of doing it today.

We've come a long way baby.

 

YouTube taught me.