On the road with Millis

I just bought my first major purchase for my future truck. A navigation system. I am now the proud owner of a Garmin Dezlcam LMTHD. Hopefully all of the reviews on this thing were right. Looking forward to getting it set up and playing with it. I'll keep y'all posted as far as its performance once I get a chance to mess with it. Supposedly this is currently the best trucker GPS out there. We will see...

 

@Tru$corpio and @truckitman72 Good luck tomorrow!

 

So, I got to play with the Garmin a little bit. There was a sticker on the screen that said this unit is ready to use. I assure you, it is not. It has two memory slots. One for video, one for map updates/downloads. It comes with an 8 gig card, already inserted into the slot for video. You'll need to get another card for the other slot. The max that you can get is 64 gigs, as this unit will not accept anything bigger. So, I went to Wally World and got a 64 gig card, UHS 1 rated. For those who aren't techies, UHS 1 is very good. $28. I inserted the card, then started the update process. You'll want to update the Garmin before you use it. You'll need to go to the address on that aforementioned sticker, and download software onto a laptop or desktop. Once installed, you can then proceed to update your GPS. If at all possible, do this at home. The updates will chew up about 5 gigs of data, for those doing this on the road. That punched a nice hole in my monthly data. Oh well, what's done is done. The update will take approximately 2 hours. Once the updates are done, you can then turn the unit on and go through the setup process. It took me about 15 minutes. You'll need to set up a profile for your truck, as far as dimensions. This is the data that your GPS will use to determine where your truck can be routed. I followed the advice of some people that had to troubleshoot their profile in order to not have any issues. My truck is 13'6" tall, I added an inch. My trailer is 104" wide. Again, I added an inch. I used 75' as the overall length. Weight is where this thing gets touchy. Max gross as we all know is 80,000 lbs. For some unexplained reason, the GPS adds a little weight to whatever you enter, so don't go with 80,000 or you'll have weight warnings all the time, even on roads you are allowed to be on. I went with 79,500. The number of axles will have to be added, so I entered 5. The GPS does not know or care about the different axles having different weight allowances. So, for individual axle weight I used 15,900 (totals 79,500). If at any point I experience any issues with this setup I'll let y'all know. So far, this thing has been awesome, and very accurate. There are several features that you can add to the display, they pop up on the right side of the screen. You can cycle through them easily with one touch while driving. If you are at all familiar with the Garmin dezl 770, this unit it appears to be identical as far as features and displayed items go. Except that the dezlcam has a 6" screen, and the 770 has a 7" screen, and no camera. The 770 will save you $100, but I wanted the camera. I didn't get to explore the video portion of the dezlcam, because I didn't mount it to the windshield while messing with it. I'll do that stuff my last week in Perry's truck. I am extremely satisfied with this unit, and can't wait to stick it to my own truck

 

The 64 I got for the vacant slot is overkill, for sure. The camera slot only has that 8 gig card, but it's good enough for now, I'll upgrade it after a couple checks. The training is going well. The are some tense moments from time to time, but the better I get, the less often those moments happen. One thing that was frustrating Perry was my mountain driving. But I learned a few of his tricks, and now that area of my driving is much better. One day at a time, one new trick at a time.

 

Time for my weekly mileage update. Yesterday was the end of week 3, and my total was 6995. I got another 498 today, which puts me almost exactly at the halfway point. Getting there... @truckitman72 and @Tru$corpio, if Bill follows his normal pattern tomorrow should be the infamous Millis 500