I'm Official With Central!

Passed my final driving and written exams yesterday, just taking some home time while I wait for my truck. After learning all the trip planning stuff, I really wasn't a fan of the old school map book way. I plan to use my Atlas to confirm my routing, but I would much rather have a navigation system going as I drive. My trainer was a living Atlas so I never got to see how the navi on the qualcomm was. Is it reliable and am I able to take the directions and fuel stops given to me through the qualcomm and input them to have the entire route there for me to look at?

Congrats on passing all of the exams!!!

To generalize, nothing in the Qualcomm is reliable. I wish I was joking. I'm sure there are a few companies that go out of their way to make sure their directions to customers are correct, but most do not.

The fuel stops you'll be able to enter into your GPS. The directions you'll want to confirm using a variety of sources - GPS, Qualcomm, Google maps, calling the customer, etc. I used to try to make sure I had at least two different sources verify that the directions were correct before I'd try to find a place.

Is it reliable and am I able to take the directions and fuel stops given to me through the qualcomm and input them to have the entire route there for me to look at?

Yes, it's very reliable. It's just like mapquest. It bases its directions as texts. In other words, it's not like a real gps where you can see over your truck all around you. It just shows you a picture of where you turn. So if you're going to get on I25 from I80 it would show an overhead image of your turn. It's not a simulation like every other gps is. Personally I never use it because using my McNally, Atlas book gets the job done for me. And obviously mac 27 for customer location directions. If you want to use it go ahead, but it just complicates it for me.

No, you cannot input your fuel stops on the route. I hope you write everything down on a journal of your loads. What I do is I write my fuel routing and fuel stops at the back of the page so you always have access to what your fuel stop is.

Is it reliable and am I able to take the directions and fuel stops given to me through the qualcomm and input them to have the entire route there for me to look at?

Yes, it's very reliable. It's just like mapquest. It bases its directions as texts. In other words, it's not like a real gps where you can see over your truck all around you. It just shows you a picture of where you turn. So if you're going to get on I25 from I80 it would show an overhead image of your turn. It's not a simulation like every other gps is. Personally I never use it because using my McNally, Atlas book gets the job done for me. And obviously mac 27 for customer location directions. If you want to use it go ahead, but it just complicates it for me.

No, you cannot input your fuel stops on the route. I hope you write everything down on a journal of your loads. What I do is I write my fuel routing and fuel stops at the back of the page so you always have access to what your fuel stop is.

Let me rephrase that. Yes it's reliable but use it in conjunction with other sources. Don't ever blindly follow any GPS with local directions. With local directions its not very reliable.

Thank you Brett, and yes my trainer was the same way he would always have at least two references to go along with

Is it reliable and am I able to take the directions and fuel stops given to me through the qualcomm and input them to have the entire route there for me to look at?

Yes, it's very reliable. It's just like mapquest. It bases its directions as texts. In other words, it's not like a real gps where you can see over your truck all around you. It just shows you a picture of where you turn. So if you're going to get on I25 from I80 it would show an overhead image of your turn. It's not a simulation like every other gps is. Personally I never use it because using my McNally, Atlas book gets the job done for me. And obviously mac 27 for customer location directions. If you want to use it go ahead, but it just complicates it for me.

No, you cannot input your fuel stops on the route. I hope you write everything down on a journal of your loads. What I do is I write my fuel routing and fuel stops at the back of the page so you always have access to what your fuel stop is.

thanks man, yeah during training I would copy the route down in my notebook and follow that way. It would just be nice to be able to see the route info displayed, such as how many miles out, time before I reach and such