Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

Hey Garmin, Rand McNally, Cobra and the rest of you, listen up. I want to say this to a GPS – no pushing any buttons – “from where I am right now, I want to go to the nearest large truck stop with a CAT scale and a restaurant – compute.” And I want the answer fast. I want to see the results on a 5″ inch screen that has a rubber knob to turn the brightness up or down. I want another knob to the adjust the volume. I want to turn off the screen at night and just listen to the audio directions. I do not want the route color in pink, magenta or some other “girly” color. I want to see as much detail as possible. I want to know where weigh stations are, a wide variety of voices that give me the directions and will not take me down dirt roads where truck don’t belong. And I also want to be able to say this: “take me to EXIT 65 on I-10.”  I have not seen any GPS units that enables you to enter interstate exit numbers.

Rand McNally has their recently introduced truck GPS. They should have sent me one to try out and review. They didn’t. Everything I have heard about this unit is bad. The price is too high. And it simply doesn’t work. The folks in the truck stops tell me they’re not selling. So, until Rand McNally shows me otherwise, don’t bother putting it on your Valentine’s Day gift list. If you have this product and it works for you, please post a comment and tell me about your experience. I’ve tried to Google as much as I could on what Rand McNally calls the IntelliRoute TND 500, but I’m not getting much to report on. Same goes with other trucking blogs, website and forums.

As you know my Garmin was stolen at a truck dealer in Baltimore last week. I’m back to using my old Invion GPS, which is really for cars and does not work in Canada. My wife bought it from QVC where they offer 3,4,5 or even 6 “easy” payments on many of their electronics. I have decided not to replace it, because I really want a truck specific unit. Garmin has one, but after reading the user guide online, it just isn’t what I want. Quite frankly, I feel Garmin units are great for women. Sexist? Absolutely not. The display has a variety of cute little cars and the route is highlighted in magenta. It is feminine and I don’t want it on my windshield.

I’m interested in the Cobra unit, but the darn display is as large as an IMAX movie screen. It’s like having a television sitting on your dash. Did they think we needed a screen so large when most GPS units are about 15 inches from a truckers eyeballs? But despite the super sized display, it seems to have the features I want. Again, I went on line to read the users manual. I see the cost has come down to around $399, which is still pricey for me – I wish QVC would sell it so I could take advantage of “easy pay.” I also need a new Bluetooth headset and some other stuff and the miles just aren’t there right now for me to support such “extravagant” purchases. Cobra supposedly was going to come out with a 5″ unit, but I haven’t seen it. Again, if you have this unit please post a comment.

There are truck GPS units made by PC Miler, Goodyear, World Nav and others. These units are sitting on the truck stops shelves with cobwebs. I don’t have the time or financial resources to “mess around” with manufacturers other than Cobra or Garmin. Returning any electronics to a Flying J or Pilot is difficult and time consuming. No that’s not really true – it is next to impossible. I bought something PC related at FJ and it didn’t work. I ended up having to send it to FJ corporate headquarters in Utah for a refund. I was lucky to finally receive a check.

So, although I have my old GPS back, I need an upgrade as soon as possible. I don’t want to go back to using MS Streets & Trips again. That never really worked for me having my laptop out and on all the time, despite Microsoft’s claims that the 2010 version is the “cats meow.” And all in all, I believe the manufacturers need to do a better job of getting more feedback from drivers (they say they do, but they really don’t) and send some test units out to the media for review and comment. I’d really like to try one of these units for 60-90 days before I have to commit to laying out $499 for one. Consumer Reports.org has rated 4 of these units, but you need to subscribe to read the results. It would really be a plus if OOIDA would buy 1000 Cobra units and sell them to drivers at a great discount along with a year’s membership. But we know that’s never going to happen.

I received a call from our comment line about our post reviewing Largo Software’s Nautilus In Cab program. We wrote a couple of posts about it and even had the creators of Nautilus on one of our podcasts.

The Contact form on LargoSoftware doesn’t seem to work as it never submits the form. I do know that Alex of Largo Software has moved on to another job. I downloaded the program and even though there is a 14 day free trial, the license server for even a free trial doesn’t seem to be working either.

I wish I could help out, but if the license server won’t even return a 14 day free trial and the contact form doesn’t seem to work, there isn’t much I could do. Once we get past that hurdle maybe I could help a few if there are installation problems or trying to run the software on Vista or Windows 7,  but until we hear from Largo Software I regret there is nothing else to do.

Our introduction to Nautilus In Cab was back in Sept 2007 and unfortunately, no matter how good a program is, things change, situations change and people move on. Hopefully, this is only a small blip in the Nautilus program and things will get back on track, especially for those that have already purchased the program.

Until we find out more and hear directly from Largo Software, this is where it stands.

You could help in Google’s takeover of the world while saving money at the same time. If you are using Microsoft Exchange in your office, you could save a ton of money switching to Google Apps for Business. Google Apps includes Gmail for email, Google Docs for document, spreadsheet and presentation sharing and a Google Sites to make small web pages that act like your company intranet (a private internet only your company can see) and Google Calendar is great for appointment and event managing and sharing.

Microsoft Exchange is really expensive for any business to run. Not only do you have an investment in software, but you are probably paying yearly license fees. Plus if you’re a really large company you may have a completely separate server or you may have it sharing the same hardware as your file servers. In either case, you’re paying fees, plus you may be paying extra for spam, anti-virus and maybe archiving and backup services. You are making backups off site right?

It’s called “Cloud Computing”, all you need is a browser and you can access your data from anywhere. There are hosted solutions for Microsoft Exchange, but they charge as much or more then Exchange, then add document sharing, mobile device access, anti-spam / anti-virus programs and you’re talking serious change. Google has their solution and it comes in at $50 a year per user. That is really, really, really cheap. No equipment to take care of, no backups to worry about and it’s all inclusive. Get company email on Blackberries, or any mobile phone that can do email. Plus support is included. If you’re a small company you may have someone on-call or even worse, on retainer you’re paying for and every computer guy knows Exchange is not the easiest thing to take care of. Plus, because you absolutely need your email working all of the time, you may even have two of everything for redundancy. Then you’re paying for someone to upgrade and install patches, with Google, you won’t even notice. No more scheduled downtime for equipment, no more equipment. Only an Internet connection. You may still want to keep your file server, but you can put the rest on eBay.

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I don’t. And I know that most truck drivers don’t either. However, it seems that truck stops across America seem to think that $499 is an acceptable price for a GPS – more specifically a truck “specific” – truck route – GPS unit. And they’re wrong. The comfortable price point for this type of accessory is maybe $299. I paid $119 for my InVion GPS on 4 “easy payments” from QVC. It does not offer truck routing, but I’ve driven long enough to know which routes & roads to take and which to avoid.

I have seen in Love’s that a large screen truck specific GPS unit that had sold for $599 is now on sale. It’s way overdue, but will not make a difference. They’re offering a $50 mail in rebate. I refuse to buy anything with a mail in rebate. Apply the rebate at the point of sale aka the cash register. Besides, $549 for a GPS unit, truck specific or not, is a outrageous price. I’ve never seen a driver purchase one nor have I seen any of these over-priced devices in a truck. Did the Love’s buyer actually think that a truck driver would reach into his/her wallet and shell out $599? No way.

The typical truck stop display has about six GPS units featured. One or two offer, as a “added” feature, Bluetooth. Those units sell for about $299. Bluetooth is one of the most overrated annoying accessories. I’ve tried several Bluetooth devices and in the truck or not, they don’t work well. I have never felt comfortable talking to anyone on something shaped like a match box sporting a blinking blue light attached to my ear. They are all awkward and uncomfortable. I need a boom microphone that sits in front of my mouth. When the Parrot Bluetooth headset, which I hear is pretty good, is priced at $59, I’ll buy it. But combining GPS with Bluetooth does nothing for me.

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The next operating system from Microsoft is called Windows 7. It’s not the 7th version of MS Windows, it’s just a name. The big debut is October 22nd, if you buy a new computer now, you can get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it’s released.

Should you upgrade from XP or Vista to Windows 7 when it comes out? The short answer is yes! Windows 7 is the most polished and finished product Microsoft has released in a long time. 7 was beta tested by millions and even when the beta version came out, it was a very stable platform. Many have said, “It’s what Vista was meant to be.”

If you’re already running Vista your hardware will run Windows 7 no problem. Most modern computers running XP shouldn’t have a problem. Windows 7 can run on a 1 mhz processor with 1 gb of ram and you only need 16 gb of free disk space. That’s for the 32bit Windows 7, 64 bit requires a little more, but not much. Don’t get the 64 bit unless you know what your doing. The majority of people only get the 64 bit system because they think more is better.

If you don’t have more than 4 gb RAM in your machine a 64 bit system is a waste. Even with more RAM only certain programs will take advantage of a 64 bit system. Unless you’re doing a lot of video editing and converting, you probably don’t need a 64 bit system. Your Internet won’t run any faster on a 64 bit than a 32 bit. And there are still reports of certain programs having problems with 64 bit systems. If you really want one, I’d wait another year.

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I didn’t know where the holiday originated, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. It says that the first Labor Day here in the US was celebrated back on September 5th 1882 in NYC. After workers were killed by US Army soldiers and US Marshals during the 1894 Pullman Strike – the President at the time – Grover Cleveland – put reconciliation with labor as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation declaring Labor Day a national holiday was spearheaded through Congress – it passed unanimously – and was signed into law six days after the end of the strike. FYI – the Pullman strike involved violent disputes between the unions and the railroads.

So now you know where Labor Day began. Fast forward to 2009. I just drove the 600 miles from wherever I was to just West of Jacksonville. I’m tired. Including myself, there was a lot of trucks on the road. Obviously “we” didn’t have the day off like the stock market, Federal government employees and of course, the sales, safety and operations people who work for the carriers. They’re home, “we’re” not.

For the record, as of today, there are 15 million people unemployed in the US. The percentage is almost at 10%, the highest level in years. Last month, the economy bled 250,000 jobs. Foreclosures – not from the ranks of adjustable mortgages or where people got homes for no money down – but from conventional mortgage holders. Somehow, we – I should say – greedy businessmen are going to have to start hiring 125,000 folks a month in order to stop that percentage from rising higher. Listening to the Labor Secretary on the radio today, telling people to go back to school – take advantage of the “many” government programs available and get “other” jobs only caused my stomach to turn. After she added that Pell Grants are easily obtainable as I try – and I’m employed – to come up with $900 to pay my son’s college tuition because we can’t get a loan – well, I thought here’s another rich Obama “official” living in liberal fantasy land.

Also, one year ago today – Labor Day – the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Combined they hold over 5 1/2 trillion dollars in mortgages. They were given a $100 billion dollar bailout. One year later, credit is extremely tight whether you run a trucking company, an airline or small manufacturing concern. While the Obama Administration continues to oversee these two entities, they have offered no strategy as to how to successfully manage them. We’ll have to wait until February, when they say they will have some sort of plan. Meanwhile companies continue to go bankrupt and eliminate jobs because they cannot obtain credit.

Today, by the way, is the biggest home improvement day of the year. Yes, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ace Hardware, Wal-Mart, Target and the rest were open. Their employees celebrate the holiday by working. Today more people “dig-out” their Christmas lights than at any other time of the year. No I’m not kidding. And please permit me a senior moment – when I was a kid – nothing was open. Back then there was also talk of a 4 day work week someday. Computers were going to make our lives so much easier. The way things are going, I don’t think our kids will be celebrating this holiday – not so much a holiday – in future years. There is no talk of working less – just more – and for less money than you probably earned five years ago. If you lucky enough to have the day off, enjoy it.

Photo credit: http://www.oldcitypics.com/images/empire-state-workers-1930.jpg

I’ve seen your billboards. I’ve heard your commercials. You know the ones. How one freight train will take 250 trucks off the road and improve highway congestion. How your trains are so fuel efficient. How service via rail is so superior. How you protect the environment. How by using trains I can reduce my carbon footprint.

Railroads, I’d like to tell you just where I’d like to put my footprint. And it has nothing to do with carbon or the environment. You people have lost your minds. And I’m going to take a few minutes just to tell you how wrong you are and how your message to the American public is a bunch of hooey. Oh your slick, I’ve got to give you that. But I, for one, can see right through all your nonsense.

Let’s start with the most important point. America doesn’t care what you have to say. Trains are no longer sexy. Kids want to be truck drivers and jet pilots, not train engineers. What fun is it to just to go forward and occasionally in reverse? When America thinks of trains, they think smoke, loud ear piercing horns and having to wait at annoying rail road crossings while your cars jingle jangle across the tracks. And while folks are sitting in their cars waiting for your train to someday pass, they’re praying its doesn’t go off the tracks and spew ammonia or some other lethal chemical all through their neighborhoods.

America hates trains. In fact, the day you chose to get rid of the friendly red caboose at the back of your lineup of toxic clickety clackety noisy rusty railcars, America’s love affair with the train died. Trains are dangerous. They’re too big and too heavy. They scare people. When is the last time someone asked for a train set for Christmas? When is the last time you took a train somewhere? Have you ever shipped anything by rail?

Jim, my jibber-jammer is down. I need that part. Ok, I hear ya Bill, I’ll get my guys to get it on the next train out. You should have it in two or three weeks. Listen, nobody even knows how to ship anything by rail. Don’t you need to be right on the tracks? What if the material is oversized? How do you get it to the railroad? Where are the railroads? How would I get something from Charlotte to LA? Do I use the Burlington Northern or the Carolina Illinois Railroad which will transfer it to the Midwestern Union Pacific or Santa Fe or California Wyoming Express to yet some other train so it gets to LA somehow someday?

Can I tell you a little secret? Make sure nobody is looking. Ready? OK. There is NO railroad in the world that can do anything without trucks. All the switches, locomotives, rail yards, freight cars, engineers, lights and horns don’t make any difference without trucks and truck drivers. Because even if JB Hunt, Schneider, UPS and Swift intermodal their trailers anywhere, they still have to be picked up and delivered by truck. Ain’t no darn railcar going to drive into Wal-Mart and back up to a dock with the freight.

When America thinks freight transportation they think truck, not rail. When America thinks rail they think hazardous chemicals, hot molten tanks cars with white clouds of smelly smoke and yellow mucus liquid oozing from the top and freight cars with graffiti sprayed all over them with hobos, beggars, criminals and illegal immigrants riding inside or on top top of them.

Railroads, nice try, but trucks are the foundation of America’s movement of goods. If you eat it, drink it, sleep on it, sit on it or ride on it, mostly likely it was delivered by truck. In fact, the backbone of any rail system is the truck, not the train. And you know it. So good luck with your “campaign” but you’re not fooling anybody.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cemeteryrodeo/2049011904/

My two year contract was up, both mine and my wife’s phones were way past the two year upgrade time and we were going month to month waiting to get the best deal. One of our shopping centers here had all three Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all in the same shopping center. We went in all three, told the sales people, we’re looking for the best plan and phone. With our situation, we ended up with T-Mobile.

A reasonable family plan, 5 numbers for your circle of free calling, a data plan for one phone and a small texting plan. Both AT&T and Verizon were more on the basic family plans, everyone was the same on the dataplans for their smart phones, texting plans for AT&T and Verizon were unlimited $15 a month or pay per message. T-Mobile had multiple texting and we can upgrade if we really get carried away.

If you’re contracts are up and you’re happy with your present carrier, tell them your shopping around and you’ll get all kinds of incentives to sign up with them. Verizon offered all sorts of things, basically better phone upgrades and some short term incentives, but in the long run I think this will be cheaper for us.

The g1 is an awesome phone. It’s been out about a year and the only thing that has change has been firmware upgrades. The G2 is coming out soon, but it doesn’t look that much different and the software is going to be the same. It will probably be faster etc… but it’s not here yet.

If you’re on Google Mail, you’re contacts are in Gmail, you’re using Google’s Calendar, the G1 is perfect. Seemless integration, I gave it my google account info and I was done. I can setup POP3 and IMAP accounts, but they’re all forwarded to my gmail account already. If you absolutely have to use Outlook, there are ways to sync your calendar, but the best way is to just move it to Google’s Calendar and dump Microsoft.  Use the Lightning plugin for Thunderbird if you want your mail and calendar in one program. If you’re mail and calendar etc… aren’t already in the “cloud”, you should seriously think about moving them to an online system.

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I know there are a lot of different smart phones out there and this is what I want to get started. I’m going to review my new G1. I admit this is the first smart phone I’ve had because I’ve never found a phone to replace my laptop and if my laptop was with me all the time with a cell card, why settle for something less.

Now I have to be more mobile and my laptop isn’t always with me, but I still need to get online. Even for a few minutes to look something up or get an email someone just sent. Texting is becoming more common and I wanted a phone to text on instead of the normal keypad which is agonizing to try and text.

I’d also love to hear what drivers are using their smart phones for, besides the obvious, email, texting, twitter etc… How’s browsing the web on your phone for road conditions or traffic? What apps do you have that you use for trucking or apps that you’ve found that are just really cool.

Which service do you have and what do you think of it? Is coverage okay? Any dropped calls? Are the calls clear?

Email me at the regular contact page or leave your comments here and when I get enough of them, I’ll organize them somehow and come up with the perfect phone for trucking, or just for fun.

I know, that’s not a g1 in the picture, g1 is nicer.

Everyone knows what Twitter is right?  If you don’t, you should. It’s fun, its a great way to stay in touch and it’s almost INSTANT. When that plane went down in the Hudson river a couple of months ago, I knew about it, almost before it hit the water. When the elections in Iran were discovered to be soured, I knew about it, HOURS before the CNN anchors did. (not that I was in the least surprised by it) I get 99.9% of all my World, National and Local news though it. Instead of the failed national media’s daily rhetoric of Obama worship, bile, vomit and hate for conservative women, I get truth, honesty and honesty in opinion, up to the second, second by second.

Then again, I’m a bit of a geek and always have been.

I talk to truckers all over the country, every single day. There are a lot of truckers on Twitter that use it for a lot of the same reasons I do.  Virtually instant nation wide communications about trucking issues and a lot of people to poke fun at too.  Road conditions, storms, DOT checkpoints and virtually anything else you might want to know about. When the DOT, National wide, had their last “lets supplement our budget with trucker pay” contest here a couple of weeks ago I had up to the minute station information, closures, road blocks, etc etc. Some people get email on their phones when an Amber Alert is given, this alert is instantly dumped into twitter and often reaches the other side of the country  before the official word does. Yeah, its fun, but it can be a damn fine tool also.

Drop by and take a look and feel free to follow me there. (@TerenceSmelser)

Warning, there are some serious idiots on Twitter and they want to sell you things that you don’t need or want, they want to offer you “work from home” opportunities or they want you help them smuggle a ga-zillion US dollars in the country  and some of the worst of them are truckers. (Like this surprises any of us…)

Worse yet are those that claim to “want to help” truckers, especially if you are new to the job. They want to “help” you NOT make the mistakes that “SO” many of us have.  Trust me, everyone of these people that I have run into so far, want to “help” themselves to your money, as they sell you a “book of secrets”. There would be your mistake…

Let me make this real plain, if you’re new to the industry and have a question, ASK me, ask one of these other writers here, ask your BOSS.  I probably wont know the answer, but I’ll point you at the guy that does. He’s probably that quiet “old fart” driving for the same outfit you do. Neither one of us is going to “charge you” for information that you deserve.

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