Can I use my car GPS for trucking?

I bought the basic Garmin knowing that I might get frustrated and toss it out the window, but it works. I might upgrade to the better unit later on.

After 34 years of trucking I refuse to confess I am making a career of it! I am still waiting on my agent to call telling me I have a second audition as lead guitarist for Mason Prophet!!!!!

I suppose I should tell them that arthritis is setting in?

 

im not doing the trucking thing yet but getting ready to go to truck school and i have a iphone myself and used several times to find some places and it was right on .

 

A couple of weeks ago I took delivery of a Rand TND 510. Thanks to Diesel Boss for the great service and extra goodies. I wish I could say I was happy with the unit itself. The first thing I noticed was that it asks you for the length of your trailer and does not give you any options under 48'. It also does not allow you to enter your overall combination length, which is what determines your routing in many areas I run in. Then there's the matter of the routes it chooses for me. Following are some examples:

1. Between Laramie & Denver it routed me via Hwy 287, which is fine, that's the route I have always taken. Except it also sent me off on some smaller road which took me through additional towns and traffic and across a bridge with a 30 ton weight limit.
2. The directions it was giving me to my delivery address in Denver just didn't seem right. It had me making something like 8 turns to get from the freeway to my customer. A call to the customer got me directions consisting of 2 turns after I took the correct exit.
3. It did a good job of getting me to my pick up address in Colorado Springs, but leaving there it routed me through town for about 10 miles and dozens of traffic lights when I was probably less than a mile from the freeway & should have been able to basically re-trace the route I took in.
4. Sitting in Tacoma WA, wanting to navigate to my delivery in Ravensdale WA it gave me a route that was over 130 miles long. A call to the customer gave me a route that was a little over 30 miles long, all of which was legal for my truck.
5. Leaving Ravensdale it tried to route me over Forest Service roads to get back to Tacoma.

At this point I basically gave up on it. A friend in Tacoma loaned me a Garmin Nuvi, almost identical to the one I have at home. I plugged it in & it has been giving me reliable directions ever since. It is my opinion that the Rand is a total POS. Its inability to route correctly is so severe that it is incapable of performing the task it is marketed for, it fails its warranty of merchantability and I want my money back.


I could expound subjectively for hours about how much I dislike my Rand. One small example- the mispronunciations would be hilarious if they weren't so confusing and difficult to hear. This unit cannot pronounce "Addy" correctly and what it does with "Sunol" is absurd.


My friend in Tacoma, who sells camping gear for a living and knows a lot more about GPS than I do, contends that Garmin products are superior because Garmin has spent so much more time and effort than anyone else developing their user interfaces. At this point I think I agree. Everything about the Garmin is cleaner, crisper, simpler and more intuitive; Menus, inputting addresses, screen appearances & layouts are all way better on my Garmin. I cant compare the Rand to a truck-routed Garmin, but I will be able to fairly soon. If Rand wont give me my money back I think I'll find someone I really don't like, give them the unit and laugh as it leads them every which way.

 

that sucks, but i've logged over 100,000 miles in the last 9 months with my TND 700 and have only had a few issues. Nothing that a little common sense couldnt fix




American Trucker

 

The Garmin probably does not see the truck restrictions. So as a car it would take you right there.

Did you go to main screen/preferences/route/freeway - prefer freeways?

If you give me more details on the area's that lead you astray we can look at the truck attributes and see what they are. Start/end is also good.

Thanks,
Mark

 

That's my point. My truck is 65' OAL. I can travel on a lot of roads that longer combinations cannot. Why doesn't Rand have this in their system? There are bunches of us out here that run shorter trailers on two lane roads. If the Rand cannot handle this they should make it clear in their marketing that the units are for freeways only.

 

Give me some examples. We can look at the truck attributes for those segments.

Thanks,
mark

 

Why does Rand even use trailer lengths when it is the overall combination length that determines which routes you can use?

I will record some examples, although having to do so irritates me. For the $$ the thing should work properly for my application out of the box.

A few of this weeks foo-foo's;

1. A totally disorienting melt down in Bremerton WA. It was giving me obviously incorrect turns and highway numbers. I will say that after I just went through town towards Tacoma (instead of where I was trying to go) it did a good job of navigating me back on the correct route.

2. In Hauser OR it sent me down a road that that quickly turned to gravel & ended in the sand dunes. I had to call the shipper for directions, S turn back my way to the highway with nothing but sand on each side of the narrow road, then blindside out into traffic so I could get to where I was going.

3. It did not want me to take 19th Ave. to the Golden Gate Bridge to get out of San Francisco. That was the shortest & fastest route & I'm legal for it. When I was coming to the end of Park Presidio, ready to get on the bridge it tried to route me down through the Marina. Good luck getting a truck down Chestnut Street! Right before the bridge it gave me some bizarre warning that disappeared from the screen before I could take my eyes off the road long enough to read it.

Every time it does this crap it is costing me time, burning my HOS & messing with my productivity. I bought a truck routed GPS to help me with those very things, this isn't helping. I don't need a GPS to tell me which highways/freeways to use between metropolitan areas. I need it to safely and legally navigate me over the lesser roads and streets needed to reach my destination. My Rand is failing miserably at that task.

 

I've got a Garmin 1450LMT. It does a decent job. I enter in the address then check against my atlas to see if there's a better way.