Posted on Dec 25, 2007 - 5:46pm by Wayne Weisser in Video
At least that’s what Andy Jordan of the Wall Street Journal kept asking. He mainly shows how drivers use GPS and some of the drivers mention the problems of a GPS and Mapquest programs in trucks.
I talked to Andy a few times and he only wanted somebody around NYC and since I don’t do NYC hardly at all anymore I pointed him to the Bordentown, NJ truck stop. It’s got a computer center, wifi, idleaire and plenty of trucks and drivers walking around with Bluetooth in their ears and he finishes in the last full minute of a 3:20 minute piece about technology and trucking, a driver that doesn’t use any technology and has no teeth. Thanks for that brilliant piece of journalism.
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The media does it to us again. This guy searched for the lowest common denominators and found them. I’m sure these drivers are hard working drivers, but why do they have to find the most unkept people to do these interviews with?
“I got drunk all weekend and needed Quallcomm to find my truck.” Shows that a company with Quallcomm is also desperate enough to hire anybody. Any normal business would fire him. My company would fire a person for mentioning drinking and trucks in one sentence I believe.
Who would trust Mapquest directions to get a big truck to it’s destination? I guess the same one that would back a trailer into an apartment building. You would have to be a new driver to try that.
If you listen closely and get past the stereotypical drivers this guy found, there is a good message. A driver has all this information available, but it’s not all useful. There is no equipment available to help a driver with every obstacle in his path. There never will be. You will still need a human brain to do our job for quite some time to come. I can go on and on about the IdleAire situation and what a government funded farce that is, but I’ll spare you.
I would like to know why more state DOT’s do not put more useful web information on their sites. Some states are good, others barely have any information. It seems that putting up route information would be simple for them to post, but they usually do not.
I’ll try to never work for a company using Quallcomm. It was great 15 years ago, but a waste of money now. Companies are unwilling to part with their investments in old technology, plus all of the updates and custom software, they are stuck with it. When I go to a company and see green screens, especially ISeries (IBM midrange computers), I know to run. They are backwards and utilizing the hard work of the drivers and dispatchers to make up for their technological shortfalls.
The driver that trusts Mapquest is just as ignorant as the driver that would never consider using it. If you want to be smart, you have to hit the middle ground to use available information with your human intellect.
I started driving in 1990 and I cannot tell you how many of these journalist I have seen go out to show America a stupid truck driver. They hit the truckstop and find whoever will talk to them. It would be difficult to find me in a truck stop. Fuel and shower, get my Subway sandwich and things to get by , then I’m out of there. Get as close to the delivery as possible, get on the computer for a while, then sleep.
As for his question, “Is The CB Dead?”, as far as I’m concerned, yes. My CB quit working a couple of months ago and I do not miss anything about it. My attitude has even improved. I don’t hear the non-stop stupidity anymore. I’ve got a cell phone and a computer for directions. I call the businesses that request CB communications. I just can’t bring myself to put money into something so useless as a CB.
The CB as a reliable tool for a professional trucker has been dead for quite some time. Anyone who depends on it for directions or help is helpless when some idiot with a “big radio” decides to talk over and ridicule the person wanting information. But, most of us with any intelligence all know we cannot depend on it anymore and use other tools for directions - cell phone calls and the internet. It never ceases to amaze me how so many drivers out there do not possess maps or know how to read them, based on the questions they ask on the cb. A lot of my directions depend on the state issuing them - I haul oversize. My company has annual permits in some states, but most places we go have the roads correct to the city street or lease road out in the boonies.
For me, the cb has turned into a close range personal non essential communications device - just to talk with our other drivers or run into someone we know. If there are several of us running together, we are NOT on channel 19. The cb just isn’t reliable enough - not enough range would be the major dig against it. Bear reports are nice to hear, but with speed limits at 70 to 75 on the interstates in most places we run - going fast enough to warrant a ticket just doesn’t make much sense to me.
Ditto.
I haul oversize too. The ONLY reason I turn on the CB is to talk to my Pilot Car drivers. That’s with two proviso’s.
a. We have a back up channel (and no…the primary channel is NOT channel 19) for when the morons start to interfere.
b. We have each other’s cell phone numbers when the CB gets to be too much trouble.
Maybe the CB isn’t dead…but it ought to be on life support. There needs to be some serious Tech Update for it to continue.
As for the Video. Well I don’t watch TV either…..that video being an example of why.
I don’t know who to be more disappointed in, the drivers or the journalist. Andy wanted something to video. The fact of our website and most of the other writers’ websites didn’t really interest him. He really wanted something entertaining. I’ve watched a few of his other video journals and they are about the same, a lot of fluff for a few minutes of nothing.
Sometimes I’ll have a shipper hand me a Mapquest or Yahoo maps page and think they are helping me. It takes all my willpower not to crumple it up in front of them but it would take me 10 minutes to explain truck routes and it’s not worth the headache or my time.
California is probably the exception when it comes to routing information on their DOT site. Truck routes, 53′ truck routes and other good stuff. I even called the office once questioning a route and they were really helpful. Saved me a ton of
moneyfines I’m sure.The best investment for routing is the standard Rand McNally truck atlas. Truck routes, restrictions and low clearances.
If you’re only using your GPS or Mapquest in NY, NJ, PA and other states in that area, you’re an idiot.
I run NY, NJ, and PA all the time. The GPS has saved me alot of headaches. I cannot find a way to explain to a non-technical trucker that the GPS is only a reference. They want absolute accuracy and it isn’t going to happen. They won’t read the directions either.
Sometimes I haul trusses and the shipper will hand me a mapquest that is blank. It will be a new development that Mapquest hasn’t mapped yet. In their mind, they’ve done all they can and it’s my baby from there. Then they will not let me talk to the receiver because of customer relation issues. It gets interesting with 16 ft. wide 65 ft. long loads lost in the burbs.
When you have shippers and receivers that think we get to them by looking though a magic ball that tells us where they’re at, you take what you can get. When they cannot give an address, I have traced things down with Delorme to get road names and called them back to verify.
It is ironic that California DOT is way ahead of the game, it’s not that bad out there, for the exception of some places in the boonies. The East Coast states give next to nothing. They’ll tell you all about the new bike path that’s going in though! Ohio’s DOT does have a nice traffic feature that is accurate.
You would think that NYC and Chicago would have their low underpasses listed, but I haven’t found much. Google’s street level is sometimes good enough to read the signs in the big cities and that’s a huge help.
I’ve been in some real binds when I started and I would have loved to have had this technology then.
This journalist would have done much better to find an intelligent driver to explain the current problem. There is a large market for better trucking GPS and if a company would just place accurate directions on their website, they could do all of us involved a huge favor. The folks that read WSJ would probably like to know that. Many business people could have read that and gave the order to put directions on the website. I guess it’s more fun to poke fun at our industry and show how inept a few super-truckers are.
Mark….I feel your pain.
No way could I haul stuff that big into unfamiliar territory with no better directions.
I now refuse to haul anything that won’t fit on a step deck or flatbed. I’m done with the roller trailers. Of course, they’re not happy. It was agreed when I hired on that trusses would be rare, but they started being everyday. Wouldn’t you know that they pay far less than normal flatbed loads too.
The lumber company gets excited to make the sale and getting the load there is an after thought.
The company did sell their drivers el cheapo GPSs that few of the drivers can figure out, but at least they’re going in the right direction. They are starting to understand why a street address is a good thing for a driver to have.
It would be nice if the customer would give a latitude and longitude of where they’re at, but that is REALLY dreaming there.
It’s hard having technical abilities at a small company that does not understand what is available. We still talk through long instructions on a Nextel instead of just e-mailing.
I spoke with Andy a couple of times and corresponded by email but, as Wayne said, he wanted someone close; and I am decidedly not. He wasn’t really interested in going to the truck stops but, with little other opportunity to interview truckers, I, like Wayne, suggested Bordentown.
I don’t really fault Andy; he found what most find when they walk into a truck stop, he found what Wayne lamented in Roadcast#4. The image of truckers is the responsibility of truckers. Mark wondered “why…they have to find the most unkept(sic) people to do these interviews with?” It’s because they don’t have to look very hard or far.
The CB lost its real value as a technological tool, for me, a long time ago. In the last ten years I’ve only used it, like Everitt, for communication with pilot cars or shippers and consignees still relying on it; like mines and steel yards. Still, I rarely find a driver without one and I suspect “the news of its death has been greatly exaggerated.” As for all the other gadgets or technologies available, I use what works for me and I assume others do the same; I’ll forgo my opportunity to pass judgment regarding the relative idiocy of those using or eschewing any of the technological gadgetry finding its way into their universe of awareness.
Every tool is as good as you use it. My GPS has gotten me into as many bad spots as it’s gotten me out of. I wouldn’t drive without it, but I wouldn’t trust it 100% either.
When I was last on the road, My C.B. was on but turned down. There was nothing on it but useless noise. Who you heard were the same idiots on this guys video. They will still sell millions of dollars worth of C.B.’s because there will always be idiots like them to buy them. This reminds me of when the news needs the story about tornado’s down here in the south. They head straight to the nearest trailer park and find the skinny, toothless skinny guy thats married to the 600 pound woman.
I still like the CB Radio, best of all its FREE to talk on, anywhere, anytime, to anyone !! Sure beats a cell phone ! I still have my 40-channel Uniden from 1995 too !
Is the CB dead?
Some shippers still use it and some consignees. There are a few truck stops that use them at their scales (guess they dont want to spend the money to put a comm system at the platform).
Every once in a while it’s nice to get into a conversation with someone you don’t know, or someone who’s hauling something unusual.
Other than that, it’s fairly useless unless you have a bizarre personality and for some reason enjoy listening to backwoods morons or hopelessly lost bigots.
So is the CB dead? Well, not yet…. but it ought to be.
Then again, I hate to see money spent go to waste, so I keep the 23 channel CB that i picked up in 1975 in the truck for those rare instances that i find it has some value.
I think what really irritates me is the fact that I go a long way to convince townies that truckers aren’t complete idiots; then they get to view a video such as the one shown above.
….sigh….