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….

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.

No way could I haul stuff that big into unfamiliar territory with no better directions.

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.

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.

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 money fines 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 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.