Just 10 years ago, the average trucker’s high-tech toolkit included only three items: an atlas, a CB radio and a pocket full of quarters for a pay phone. Although the trucks were more advanced, the basic methods of communicating and navigating hadn’t changed since the golden age of trucking in the 1960s and ’70s.
More than any other decade, the 1990s fundamentally changed the way truck drivers do business. The cell phone, which in 1992 was a hulking 5-pound bag that was too expensive and too limited in range, is the most obvious form of this evolution. Cellular handsets have replaced the CB and the pay phone as the communication device of choice for truckers and companies (see “Ring of the Road). More surprising, perhaps, is how many truckers now rely on computers.
In a recent survey of Truckers News readers who own a computer, for instance, more than 40 percent say they use it for business purposes.
Owner-operator Jack Felker is one of those truckers who uses a laptop computer to make his life on the road a little easier. Felker says he has a Global Positioning Satellite system hooked up to his laptop, and runs software from mapmaker DeLorme to plan his routes. “I can pre-plan my route and it will highlight it so all I have to do is follow the arrow on my screen to my destination’s address,” he says. “I know when I have a turn coming up and I immediately know if I’ve gone the right way. I am basically the little arrow on the map.”
Hundreds of carriers have turned to GPS units to help drivers with directions or provide maps on in-cab display screens. “It’s accurate down to less than 50 feet and is also full of other useful information like the correct time and exactly how fast you are moving,” Felker says. “The miles it tells me the trip will be are right on, and it also tells me how much farther to my destination as I travel. I don’t spend valuable time trying to find where I need to be, and my phantom unpaid miles are as low as they come.”
Trucker Curtis Ferguson uses a home computer to keep in touch with family and friends, sending e-mail rather than racking up long-distance charges. Ferguson, who trucks in the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico, also uses his computer to keep up with industry news and weather reports. Ferguson is one of the 66 percent of truckers who have access to the Internet. In fact, of those truckers who use computers for business, more than half use e-mail, according to the Truckers News survey.
Other truckers use computers in business because their carrier requires them to do so. For more than a decade, thousands of drivers have used Qualcomm units to communicate with their fleet headquarters. Today, more than 150,000 drivers have access to e-mail through Qualcomm’s CabCARD program. Drivers for carriers that track trucks with PeopleNet’s g2x system also have access to e-mail.
