Swift stabbed me in the back

You beat me to it.

 

Nope it would of locked up and froze before you ever got to the turn.

 

So true.

 

an old fashioned rule all you newbies are never taught in those lets give them the basics and putm in a truck and turn them lose
BEFORE YOU TURN IN ANYWHERE BEGIN YOUR PLAN OF TURNING AROUND OR NOTICE HOW YOULL GET OUT FIRST

 

I go many places and could care less what the street names are. I look at a map and count how many streets from my last turn. Sometimes that is too far so I use references like RR crossings or river crossings. A few weeks ago I had to drop a bridge beam on a county road. I looked it up on a map and saw it was the third left after leaving the small town. Guess what? I got there.

When you are running something that is oversized, you don't want to miss your turns, especially if you are 150' long or pulling a trailer with a booster. These are not recommended to back up when loaded. Tends to break things like the pins.

There are several customers that I go to that I have no clue what street they are on. My first time to this one customer was given directions... Get off at Zoo drive, cross over the interstate and take a right at the first light, take another right at the stop sign and they are on your left. I have been going there for 3 years now and I still don't know what the street name they are on because I don't care. It means absolutely nothing in my life.

It is the same way with these people getting to work every day. Now the shipping and receiving dept should have directions available to them for this purpose.

Or you could get directions like I did on my very first load.... Where do I drop this stuff? Just go to (small town) and drive around and you will find the asphalt plant. OK...... 14 miles south of town and 2 miles across a wheat field is where I found it thanks to a local.

Now if you want to see what a deer looks like in your headlights, just give someone directions using North, South, East and West.

 

LOL, when I found a woman who knew the four directions, I put a ring on her.....

First GPS mishap was when a co-driver woke me up in the middle of a mobile home park in Kimberley, BC, off hwy 3. At 3 a.m. Backed out of that ok with a lot of GOAL. Apparently the GPS told him to do it.

OK, confession time......

Worst one was on a snowy October night going North out of Ennis, Montana. Empty. Chain light was up on the hill, but the guys on the CB said it wasn't too bad. So I put on just two chains and went for it. When one of those chains broke, just around the first curve, I wasn't going anywhere. Within a few minutes, traffic is piled up, trucks are stopped and spinning, and the whole road gets shut down.

Officer took one look at me and said he was going to call a wrecker, but it would be a while. When I asked if I couldn't just back down, he was fine with that, as long as I would get out of the way. Everyone left, and I got to back down the hill, while snowing, plus another mile to the first place to pull off. No way to turn around, because with all the snow it was impossible to see the edges of the road, let alone driveways or wide spots. So I just put it in the middle of the two lane and backed her up the two miles.

No damage, other than my pride........ And I am really good at putting chains on tight, now.

 

So you don't know the names of the streets around where you live or even how you get there? How do they get there every day if they don't know how they do it? I wouldn't give a crap whether they knew street names or not but the majority of them didn't know what turns they made or any landmarks to give. That makes giving directions a little difficult, no?

 

Couldn't care less what the names are. I know the major ones but If I have to go somewhere I either know where it is or look it up on a map. My memory is too valuable to waste the space on street names.

There are places that I could drive to but could not tell you how to get there. You recognize things as you drive, you do not necessarily remember them to verbalize them into directions.

 

@cnsper pulls big loads.And he's right. In our line of work, we can't miss. Lots of times, when doing a job like that, the delivery point is in a place that doesn't even have a name yet. They give the name of the nearest town. Some times, even the road doesn't have a name. You call your receiver and the receiver gives directions like, "Go through town on Highway 91. Approximately 24 miles down the road, you will cross a railroad track. 1 mile after the RRX, look for a jughandle turn on your left and a gravel road on your right. Use the jughandle to make that right turn."

In our line of work, you can't miss, because you're too big to get turned around on even the biggest of highways. A driver I knew missed a turn on US259 in Texas. Divided highway, 4 lanes wide. Tried to make a U, but wound up getting his tractor stuck. Blocked all lanes, and even the shoulders. Everyone hears about your screwup when your load is big.
For example, look on a map at Colorado City,Texas. We were coming from San Angelo heading to Lubbock. Permit said to take US87 to TX163 to I20BL to TX208 to I20 to TX208. One driver followe his pilot cars and missed the turn on 163. He ran into all that construction on 87 and couldnt get through. Big mistake. B-I-G! Another driver went the correct route, but followed his GPS. If you look on the map, TX208 runs right through the middle of town, but there's a Truck Route 208 too. One driver took his load up through the middle of town. When I went by, the news cameras were there, the police were there, it seemed like everyone in town was there. You know they had to call the black and whites. If he had done his homework, he would have realized that he was supposed to take the truck route.

I always preach to the newer OSOW drivers about doing their homework, because a screwup with an oversize can be career ending. But I will say this for the rookies in general, When you can run down the highway, and the general public doesn't notice you, when noone notices you coming through a town or city, you did it right.

 

All those things would be known as 'landmarks' and 'turns' commonly known as 'directions' which as I stated in my earlier post many people can not give.

I used to have to get to hotels long before gps or cell phones. I would call and they had no idea how to tell me to get there so what do you do? There was no website, no GOOGLE, no Internet and I had stars wanting to get to their rooms that got highly irritated if there was any delay. If you have never experienced that type of thing good for you! I wish I hadn't either. In my line of work that could also be ' career ending'.