Watkins shepard

Microsoft streets and trips for your laptop works great. If u know someone who has it u can download it into your laptop for free.Lol

 

From reading the GPS threads, the only thing I'd trust is the Garmin with the truck routing. Other than that, the consensus seems to be to backcheck your routes from the GPS with the good 'ol trusty Atlas. Might as well open up the Atlas in the first place, but as per your suggestion, good to know the program isn't locked to one user.

 

I don't have truck routing. And I've been using "none" truck specific GPS units for years.

More importantly, I have grey matter between my ears.

 

Meaning that you backcheck the route it defers? One thing is for sure; if you don't actually NEED a truck specific, there are tons of units out there for cheap.
As for the alternative, well, "Here's your sign!"

 

I give it a quick look to check the route.

A newb might have problems, but I've been doing this long enough, and been to enough places, the problems rarely catch me off guard.

 

I started and still use a cheap GPS. It works really well, I put in all my stops and if I need to I will call the shipper or reciever for directions to verify (did it everytime to begin with). Now I am getting a lot of repeat locations so I know how to modify the routes to work for me. The biggest thing I've seen is that the GPS tends to stay on major interstates and W/S routing will send you on some other US highways to save miles, just modify the route accordingly and off you go.

I have been thinking about getting a truck specific GPS, but mainly because mine is an older model GPS and I do have a lot of issues with out of date maps. Of course there seems to be no way to update it though. So, just debating if I want to invest the extra money into a truck specific one or not...

 

hey guess, im sittin here playing with my new World Nav, its pretty cool., i picked up the big 7in screen, looks like a big screen sitting up on my dash compared to my garmin. its pretty good, i can locate all the weigh stations on the rds im runnin, all the truck stops, not just the few that the garmin picks up, my garmin has truck setting on it, paid 280 for the garmin a year ago, i used the World Nav for a few hours today, had it take me to a Days in where they have truck parkin on the side, the W/N has a Cat Scale search on it, all food places that can hadle a big truck, im rather impressed with it for the most part
iv heard a lot of people talking about how long it takes to re-route, but if you read the book it says that it takes longer to re-route cause it searchs a lot more info for truck, weight, height, length, hazmat, all the good stuff.
also, my garm tells me that in .08 miles to take exit xxx on right, then again at .05, .03, .02, xxfeet, the garmin just says to take exit once at .08, when usin my garmin i can click the top and get a break down of all the next exits, merging, turns that ill be makin, i cant seem to find that on the garmin, i figured for $650 it would have way more features then the garmin.
at the moment, id say to go out and get a garmin over the W/N, but this may change now that iv got a few hours to play with the new one, and learn more about it.

 

I have been looking at the World Nav myself, you have provided some good info there thank you.

Those looking might also want to check out CoPilot, I have it on my laptop however the whole setup takes up a lot of room. The new one that mounts on the window is much better if your looking to save space.

 

Had the opportunity to try out my laptop GPS yesterday on a 500+ mile trip. I have just installed the Delorme Street Atlas 2009 softwear. I found that several times it would notify me that I was off route and try over and over again to reroute me back on route even though I had never left the freeway and was never actually off route. I also found that the GPS kept routing me to a destination downtown several miles away from my actual destination even though I had entered the correct address. In my oppinion a laptop is also too big to be used as a GPS.

By the way, my trip was from Southwest Washington to Watkins/Shepard in Missoula.

 

A quick fix for that rerouting issue, that hasn't been discussed here.

The next time you get somewhere you have access to the internet. Pull up the exact coordinates of your location, and manually enter them into Delorme.

You'll find this in the Options tab, under GPS Settings. Simply enter longitude and latitude for your current location. This should eliminate most of the rerouting issues.

Allowing it to self target, will get you very close. But it will tend to be off by as much as 500 feet in some areas.

If you use multiple maps (I never did) you'll need to do this for every one of them. The settings won't change in the box, but the saved settings will be off on the map(s).

You'll occasionally (3-6 months) need to do this again, to keep things working properly.

As for your inputted address being way off. I've had a few that way. But the majority of those where on U.S. Highways, where the numbers were spread unevenly. It can mess with your head for real LOL.

And I do agree with your statement about the laptop being too big. But it's nice to be able to see a 10 square block area, and plan a reroute on the fly when you miss a drive.

Unlike a Garmin....you can see where you are in relation to the other streets. With the Garmin, you can only prey it gets it right...for a truck.