Mapping your route. What do you use?

I only use my Rand McNally. Has never failed me and never will. I dont need no electonic gizmo to tell me how to do my job. I know how to think for myself and how to do my job. Love what I do and who I am and very good at it. Dont need any other distractions added to hamper my job. I dont fall for what people say "it makes driving easier". LOL...Im already good at what I do. I am a truck driver and proud of it...Nuff said. Be safe out there drivers.

 

That depends on the type of customer you're going to. There are drivers who only bump docks at facilities that see lots of trucks every day. You're probably good with a phone call to one of these types of places, but make sure you're talking to a shipping/receiving person and not the receptionist at the front desk.

But if you're a driver to goes places which don't get big trucks every day, say delivering to a retail store that only receives one or two orders per week, then a phone call can actually be a crap shoot. When you call a place like that, you never really know if you're talking to someone who truly understands what it means when you tell them you're in a big truck and have to stay on roads that big trucks use. They might know the best way to go and all the street names. Or they might know the way they go to get to work and they've seen UPS delivery trucks on that road so it must be ok for big trucks. I've also had them do things like tell me to turn left on 'papermill rd' which what all locals call county road 627 but none of the signs call it that.

These days, I punch the address into my garmin dezl and go. I know lots of drivers say they'd never do this, but I have yet to run into a problem with it.

 

If you're talking about the broader perspective, the carrier (the larger carriers) will usually give you a "fuel solution" and a corresponding route along with the load information. The information on the screen will be cryptic but their systems will balance fuel cost, fuel needs, and distance and estimated trip times to give the driver the "preferred route". While you are not "bound" to this route, if you continually disregard them, go different routes and fuel elsewhere, at some point you're going to have some splaning to do to a fleet manager. It's up to the driver to question the routing and request a different solution when the driver is aware of something the system was perhaps not privy to.

 

It truely IS funny reading/listening to the excuses why one HAS to use some sort of electronic device to find their way around tho. The entertainment value of these threads are just priceless.

 

Who is making excuses?

 

You could get yourself into some serious trouble if you don't use your Motor Carrier Road Atlas to double check your GPS! Great if you use a GPS but don't rely on it, it will seriously bite you in the ### one day!

 

Road altas' have mistakes in them just like GPS databases. Following either one blindly is asking for trouble. I punch and I go. But I make the final decision off what I see in the windshield, not the GPS. I have never once had an issue doing it this way.

We have a dedicated lane that we sometimes pick up a certain backhaul for. This particular backhaul has you go to a shipper 20 miles from where the lane gets you empty. Then you go to a second shipper about 40 miles from the first. Every driver in the company that uses an atlas has ended up trying to pick their way through a residential neighborhood and truck restricted roads to find a way around a railroad track with lots of low overpasses the first time they do the run. My GPS took me right from one shipper to the next with no issues at all the first time I ran it. They both have issues. They both require a brain to use properly. When punch and go stops working for me, I'll consider using something else. But it hasn't happened yet and I've been doing it this way for quite a while now.

 

i use both my atlas and gps. It all comes down to what makes you happy. I really only use my gps once close to where I need to pick up or drop off but to each his own.

 

iPhone 4 w/Google Maps - usually shows the spot I need and pretty accurate. Yes, it's hand- held at that time, so...
I may try something on a laptop later.

 

Streets and Trips 2007. It took me 40 hrs to input all the restricted routes and low clearances form Rand McNally. By the way Rand McNally is wrong alot in case you haven't noticed. In fact I'd almost call it useless. I'd rather have a state map. I know a few of those know-it-all old time truckers that don't need a GPS (translates to don't know how and too stubborn to learn). What they don't seem to get is "Mapping" is different from "GPS". They are also the ones who drive 5% to 10% out of route and call me when they get lost.