Trip Planning

buy an atlas and read the written parts at the beginning. It explains itself pretty well.

 

its usually pretty straight forward. using a truck atlas, you can usually eyeball the best route on the country map. occasionally there will be some question as to whether one way or another would be less miles...for those you can use the city to city mileage to figure it out. for example...traveling from houston, tx to winchester, va, im not sure if the better route is i10- i12 - i59 - i20/59 - i59 - i75 - 181 OR i10-i12-i65-i85-i77-i81. i can compare them by looking up mileage between houston to jackson,ms then jackson,ms to winchester AND houston to montgomery, al then montgomery to winchester. most routes will generally use interstates as much as possible. some cannot..travel through kansas and texas come to mind.

not sure if this helped at all. if you have a more specific question maybe i can answer more helpfully.

 

Many of the larger companies give you a "fuel solution" and a cryptic corresponding route along with your new load information. You typically are not BOUND to run the computer generated route, but deviating routinely and not fueling like/where they'd like you to will get you a sit-down eventually. The point is, you'll find most trips are fairly self-explanatory when you look at a broad US map found at the front of any atlas. When you get into the NE and need to get off onto the smaller roads, then there can be issues. But when in doubt, run the prescribed route and you're "protected" to a degree.

 

A good thing to check on in a timely manner is the steer weights of the states you will be traveling through. I found that very helpful.

 

I go state by state as we do not run the toll roads that often so its easier for me to do it that way then right down the routes as i figure out which ones im going to take.

 

worst part is running with a company that doesnt pay for certain toll roads. usa truck did not pay for i80 in OH when i worked there...had to use 2 and 20 that follow the interstate just to the north. not TOO bad, but figuring out toledo was kind of a pain for a newbie like me at the time.

 

This can be a good starting point if you have regular access to internet ..
http://www.truckmiles.com/

 

cool. so you dont even need to read a map then lol.