I was once a truck driver.  A trucker.  Long hauler.  Road dog.  Big rig driver.  All that.  At that time, the use of GPS units in trucks was just becoming popular as their price continued to drop.  Most drivers, however, knew that these little electronic gizmos have one huge, fatal flaw when it comes to trucks.  Their routing is for cars.

My truck, inside a dock, near Chicago.

Recently, I saw an article in Work Truck talking about this and it reminded me of something that happened to me once.  It didn’t involve a GPS unit (I never had one and don’t have one now, in fact).  It did involve something close to that, though.  Mapquest.  That mapping software of evil and nefarious misinformation.

Looking for the local bar or how to find the nearest Wal-Mart?  Mapquest is perfect.  Need to figure out how to drive from a freeway offshoot highway in Chicago to some address you’ve never been to in some suburb near the lake?  Don’t use Mapquest.

Of course, if you’re a dispatcher at a trucking company who stares at a computer, doesn’t have a CDL, and has never driven a big truck before..  Hell, Mapquest can save you time when a driver is lost and needs directions.  It’s not like you’re there, in Chicago, on a Friday afternoon looking for an address while driving around in a 70-foot tractor-trailer combination.

Actually, this isn’t even the dispatcher’s fault.  She was doing her job and I always liked her.  She’s still on my Facebook friends.  The problem was with the standard operating procedures (SOP) at the trucking company itself.  They were too cheap to buy real mapping software, like Rand McNally’s Streets and Trips for Trucks, so they used Mapquest.

So I’m looking for some place that makes chocolates that I’m supposed to load up and take with me to some other place a thousand miles away.  Truckers don’t drive trucks, they haul trailers.  Trucking is all about the freight.  The problem is, I don’t know where the hell this freight is located and it’s Friday afternoon and the place I’m picking up at won’t be open the next day.

Chicago, while some people might love the place, is not my idea of a fun hang out spot – especially in a big truck, over the weekend.  The truck stops suck, the whole area is one giant smog cloud, and you’re not likely to get through more than an hour without a drug dealer, hooker, or thief knocking on your truck door.  Besides, we now know that the Obamas are from Chicago.  The place is full of thieves, gangsters, and politicians (all not necessarily mutually-exclusive professions).  It’s like D.C. II.

So Mapquest says to go down some road (take a left off the highway offramp and proceed east).  Ya, looks great on the computer screen.  My problem?  It’s a 2-lane road and three blocks down it, I’m staring at a 10′ bridge going over the street.

My rig is 13’6″ high (thirteen feet, six inches).  It’s not going to fit underneath a ten foot bridge. Not unless I get a really good run at it, anyway.

Now, imagine this: 2 lanes of road, a stop light on the other side of the bridge, Friday afternoon traffic just before quitting time at most people’s jobs, and I’m staring at a bridge I can’t go under.  There are cars behind me honking because, well, I’m sort of blocking the street.

So I turn on the flashers, make up some new words (I try to expand my vocabulary at every opportunity), and get out of the rig, cell phone in hand.  Some helpful types try to tell me they’ll guide me into an alley so I can turn around.  The problem?  There are cars parked in that alley and one of the cardinal rules of trucking is don’t accept backing guidance from people who don’t drive trucks for a living.

So I eyeball the situation and call the cops.  I hate calling the cops.  It always means tickets, lectures, possible jail time, maybe even a ride on the taser.

Luckily, the two who showed up were nice guys, just doing their jobs.  They cleared the alley, backed me in safely, and I turned around by riding up the curb, over some grass, and was back on the road.  They wrote me a ticket, since I did sort of ruin traffic for quite a while on a Friday night when people aren’t generally in the mood to be held up getting home after a week’s worth of work.

The ticket was paid by the trucking company, though.  It was their fault, after all.

I eventually found the chocolate company, but they were closed.  They opened the next day (special, just for me) and I got my load of happiness and got it delivered on time.

The moral of the story: if it’s made for cars, don’t use it in a truck.  Even if you think it will somehow save you some fuel.  Most trucking companies today, except for the very smallest of them, have good routing software that they use to tell their drivers how to get from one place to another.  They don’t necessarily give directions right to the customer’s door, but they do give good routing from city to city.

Any trucking company that doesn’t use this will go out of business (if they haven’t already).  In today’s transportation logistics world, you have to get it there on time, fast, at a good price, and you can’t waste fuel and money in the process.

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