How Do You Plan Your Routes?

google street view is my best friend
truck entrance and address on BOL are never the same
I am pretty boring thou 90% of the time I am on 80

 

That's a good way too!

 

That's for sure. One customer we had in Greenville, SC had two streets by it. One was the address and one had the truck docks off it. Google maps street view answered right away what street I needed, showed one of our trucks in the dock.

 

That's cool.

 

i have one receiver moved 5 miles down the street 2 years ago
shipping office hasn't figured it out yet
same company owns/rents both buildings

 

Great minds think alike...

 

i googled one place saw one of joseph's trucks and refused the load

 

It's my opinion, At leased when you first start driving OTR, that a Road Atlas and a Cell Phone is your best bet,, In time, if you drive long haul long enough, you will be able to navigate (mostly) through this country with out a map book, In my later years of OTR, I didn't need to open my map book hardly at all, But I always kept a map book, because there will come a day when you just need one, Having a GPS is not a bad idea ether, for once you are in the area, it can help getting to the actual address

 

depending on the company u may not get your next load info until you send in your empty call.so is what I did is call dispatch ask where I'm picking up and delivering,they would give me the city I would get out the good ole truckers atlas then write my route down and compare it to GPS and mapquest saves a lot of time if you can trip plan while waiting to get unloaded.then get the number from dispatch to the customer for directions.then while waiting to get loaded call the receiver tell them where you're coming from ,the interstate hwy etc and ask for directions that way you're not scrambling at the last minute trying to find the place.always read your signs no matter what routing tool you use.

 

Motor carrier atlas, and just google. Tell google " Navigate to ......" the address when I get close to the city. Now google assumes everyone drives a prius, so some common sense must be used here. I typically zoom out, and find the address, then make sure the route it's giving me will work with my truck; sometimes you go around a residential neighborhood not through it. You look for big streets; avenues or boulevards, many of those are truck routes as well.
Back in the day you always called the customer and got directions, many had a pre recorded message detailing the routes in. You learned quickly to ask for someone in shipping or receiving for directions, if they didn't have the recorded message for directions in, as the girl answering the phone usually drove a prius, and was lucky to be able to find her way to work at the same place everyday.