Is there professional justification for needing a laptop as a truck driver?

• A laptop can be used to run various logging programs.
• A laptop can be very useful in obtaining weather and road conditions.
• A laptop can make paying your bills and running your finances from the road very easy.
• A laptop with the proper truck mapping program can be a very useful tool when used in conjunction with your atlas.

 

You most likely will be going to a company that has Qualcomm, onboard computer to communicate with your company. But you can't do anything else with it.

The company I work for does not have Qualcomm so I use my laptop to communicate with my dispatcher a lot of the time. You could use the justification that you could end up at a company without a Qualcomm and need a laptop for better communication.

Otherwise, I think using it for maps, Google Street View, Bing Bird's Eye View, etc, is enough of a justification. Sure there are paper maps. But you can much more "professionally" plot your course and do recon on a location with the computer and internet.

 

I just started in the industry a few months ago... and i find my laptop to be a very useful tool especially for directions...plus when yu r sitting yu can surf the net to kill some time..i wouldnt leave home without it...

 

• A laptop can be used to run various logging programs.
• A laptop can be very useful in obtaining weather and road conditions.
• A laptop can make paying your bills and running your finances from the road very easy.
• A laptop with the proper truck mapping program can be a very useful tool when used in conjunction with your atlas.

I agree with leannamarie. I wouldnt leave home without my laptop I use mine to pay bills. Talk with family. Check weather. And so one.

kkburr73

 

I use mine for all that and send in payroll, expense reports, pictures of things the boss needs pictures of, etc. It's also a backup cell phone and mp3 player. I actually have two now, one's in the back for entertainment.

 

well as others said, you can use it for those and you can use it for personal use also.
but, if you buy one, you can claim it at tax time as a deduction. software you buy like mapping, or even making it into a gps unit, logging, and even using it for book keeping, all of those software programs can be deducted at tax time when you itemize.

 

The laptop. Never leave home without it. I'm so use to having mine that it's just standard.

 

My laptop is absolutely indispensable. I do all my trip planning and navigation via Streets & Trips on my laptop and use the Windows Live Local feature all the time to see a bird's eye view of my shippers and consignees and also to see super Wal-Marts I plan to shop at to see the best way to enter them. I also use the Windows Search Live feature to find hotels and to get discounts.

I use Driver's Daily Log to do all my logging on my laptop and I also do all my paperwork and send in all my trips and expenses via my laptop, my scanner/printer, and my aircard. I simply could not function without my laptop.

I also use it for entertainment to watch movies, to play games, to do instant messaging, to send and receive emails, to send and receive faxes, and to cruise the Internet. I have two mega external hard drives that I store all my movies, TV shows, football games, games, and music on, and I also play DVDs on my laptop to watch new movies I don't have stored yet.

I also download books and certain radio shows on my laptop that I then transfer to my ipod to listen to when I'm driving. I store all my pictures on my laptop and upload them to the Internet via my laptop. I also edit some of the videos I take on my trips on my laptop. I couldn't imagine being without a laptop.