Poll Only For Those Who Have Used Both : Rand McNally vs Garmin

On the OTR700 and looking at the driving screen, look at the lower right corner for 3 dots. Press on the 3 dots, choose Look Ahead, then you have the choice of Weigh Stations, Truck Stops, and Truck Parking. Click on either category and it will show you the closest several weigh stations, truck stops, or truck parking. If you click on one of those particular places you can add it to your trip.

I believe the only difference between OTR800 and OTR700 is the size of the screen.

 

@tscottme on the rand mcnally I have I can search my whole route for truck stops or rest areas. Can I do thay with the garmin otr500 or otr700 or do they only give me 2 or 3 closest to me on route?

 

I use whatever gps my employer gives me. 48 foot trailer and only 12’6” and normally partially loaded means I just make it up as I go.

You only need two OTR skills after you buy a Garmin. How to turn around after you were spacing out and how to get that rig into the Walmart parking lot. Trip planning? Optional.

 

I use truckers path on my phone. Never failed me yet. $10 a month, worth every penny. The only downside is it gobbles up a lot of data. If you run the thing all day while you’re driving, you use 50 gigs of data a month lol

 

The Garmin OTR700 allows you to look at the next several 1) truck parking, 2) truck stops. 3) weigh stations from the driving screen

 

I run Trucker Path (free) and sometimes pay for a month of service. The free version uses very little data, but only provides car-friendly routing. I run it all day. The risk is that running it all day most days your screen gets burned in. Meaning when you go o a dark screen a ghost version of Trucker Path is still visible. Trucker Path is awesome and very useful in many ways.

 

It seems to give several over some variable distance. That's to say if you have a several hundred mile trip using the "what's ahead" feature will NOT show you all the weigh stations, truck stops, truck parking until the end of the route. It will give some number of each. It seems to give all of those items over some distance ahead, but not the whole remaining distance. Some amount of my frustration with the Garmin is because I EVENTUALLY became a super-user of the RM and I'm at the newbie-level with the Garmin. I think of the RM OS like Android and Garmin like Apple.

In the Garmin you can see all truck stops, but not from the driving screen in a sequential "show me the next, next, next, next..." I think mostly I just understand the RM way of things.

 

On the 760, the truck stop list was ordered by distance with an arrow indicating direction. The search filters the list if you're looking for a specific brand. That worked so well they probably dropped the feature somewhere before the 1000 came out.

I come from the opposite direction. I've had Garmins for decades. The truck gps was a natural. Garmin gives you only what they think you need, which is generally good you just have know how to get what you want. Me and the RM tablet I tried never fell in love. I just wanted a kiss on the cheek and Rand insisted I needed a 100 room brothel.

 

I dont like the longevity of the RM. Have to replace it avery 3 to 4 years. I like that it will give me the truck stops in my route not just a few but you do have to go away from the map screen for a bit to do it. Will gibe the otr700 a shot. It is on sale now for $349 at loves

 

Run Garmin OTR 800, Good solid hardware. Mapping is accurate and does good job. As with trucking in general, everything is designed for lowest common denominator. Garmin is designing its software for what they think truckers need instead of what we're asking for.
When shaping routes in cities, the zoom function is limited. A real pain in the ###! Called Garmin, they said this is how it supposed to operate. Garmin says OTR is designed avoid downtown areas. Well that and Flying J / Loves is frustrating.
My old Garmin had more customizable options.