Has anyone found any websites where you can download custom GPS POI's for truckers (like low clearances, weigh stations and such)?

 

What's a POI? The rest of your question is answered in a hardcopy MCRA. BOL

 

Try this
http://www.discoveryowners.com/cginfolinks.htm

It's a start, but it's far from complete.

 

Points of Interest

Thank you!

 

Try this site out, but it costs!

But how many times are you going to go to places where you have to be concerned by low clearances? If you are anything like me, it is a very rare occasion.

Weigh stations are nice to have. I have hundreds of them already marked as pushpins in my default map. I use the red flag symbol to denote their locations. The way I do it is click "create GPS trail" anytime I past near one or go through one that I haven't already added to my default map. That way at the end of the day when I'm finished driving, I can go back and mark them in my default map.

I do the same thing with truck stops and already have well over a thousand of them already setup as pushpins in my default map. Also, anytime I enter a truck stop I click "create a GPS trail" so I can more precisely mark it with a pushpin.

Another thing I do is copy all the truck stop chain logos into paint, shrink them down to size, and then add them as custom symbols. That way all the Pilots I have in my default map indicates a tiny little Pilot symbol, all the Flying J’s have a tiny little Flying J symbol, all the TA’s, Love’s, Wilco’s, Petro’s and so on and so fourth all have their own tiny little symbols. I use the stop sign symbol to denote generic non-chain truck stops.

In the truck stop’s individual properties, I also indicate the road it’s located on, the exit number or hwy junction, the city and state, whether or not it is a large, medium, or a small truck stop, whether or not it has a scale, and whether or not it does major or minor repairs or none at all. Also, I indicate what kind of food it offers if I know that as well.

I literally have thousands of rest areas already set up as pushpins in my default map too. To pushpin rest areas, just set the magnification level to about 800 yards and scroll down the roads you want to mark, at that magnification level, the rest areas are easy to spot and find as you scroll. Just pushpin them as you find them. I also mark parking areas with its own symbol and turnpike travel plazas with it’s own specific symbol too. I have just begun to mark as pushpins all the shippers and consignees I go to for future reference also.

It sure is nice once you get your truck stops, rest areas, and parking areas loaded in as pushpins. The other night I delivered a load to Brundidge, AL. It was in the middle of nowhere and way off the begotten path in the boonies. However, the last time I passed through down that way I catalogued all the truck stops as I passed through.

So when my load was unloaded the other night, I clicked “find nearby places”. It indicated there were 5 truck stops within a 50-mile radius of my location and not only that, but exactly how far away each of them was from me. So I clicked the plus sign, read the details of each of them, and right clicked the one that I chose to go to, clicked route, and off I went. The software took me right to it and I was parked for the night and off to sleep in a matter of minutes.

If I wouldn’t have had those truck stops already catalogued and loaded in as pushpins, it would have been exponentially more difficult to find a suitable truck stop to spend the night in and I probably would have had to spend the night like all those other trucks that were there also. Three of them were crammed tight into a tiny convenience store parking lot that wasn’t even a truck stop, one was parked at a car wash, and the rest of them were all illegally parked in the mud on the side of the road! It sure will make your life and job a lot easier and nicer once you get them loaded in.

 

I checked out their Wal Mart locations before and didn't find them to be accurate, but I didn't check out their low clearances.

 

I just checked out the Flying J's in the Flying J list against some of the ones that I got loaded in my default map and it's not exact but still pretty damn close. I'd say it is definitely close enough to use and when you actually eventually visit those locations you can then move them into the exact locations as the final adjustments.

 

Thanks for the info Toothpick.. You've given me some great ideas

 

Glad I could help. Here’s another tip that I learned through the school of hard knocks.

Whenever I tried to route through certain cites and towns the software always tried to route me through the interior perimeter of those cities and towns instead of preferentially taking the loop around them, which was a problem for me because 95 percent of the time I wanted to go around them instead of through them since I haul a lot of hazmat loads. Hence, as a result I would have to go to each of those cities and towns and manually drag and drop the route to the roads I wanted to pass on that would take me around them.

I played with different settings inside the software to see if I could get the program to route me around them, but nothing I tried ever seemed to work. Then I came up with the idea of drawing a big square through the center of those particular cities and towns and clicking avoid area, and lo and behold the program started routing me around those cities and towns as I wished instead of through them. So I saved those avoid area squares in my default map.

You can try doing the same thing yourself. Try routing around the cities of Atlanta or Washington DC. If your software is like mine, it will also try to take you through the interior perimeter of those two cities instead of around them every time. Next…draw a large square in the center of those two cites, then right click inside the square and select avoid area. Now try routing around them again. This time the program will route you around them as desired.

You can use this simple trick also anywhere the software attempts to route you through the center of small towns that have loops or truck routes as well. Anytime I find the software routing me through the center of small towns and there is a loop that goes around the town instead, I use this simple trick and also save them in my default map.

Now…what do you do if you have the occasion to deliver inside the perimeter of any of those cities and towns that you delineated with avoid area squares? Easy…you simply click inside them, your cursor will change to a drawing tool, click on route on your menu bar, and then remove the check mark from the menu where it says avoid area. Alternatively, you can also right click inside the square and click the menu to remove the check mark where it says avoid area. The program will then leave a black square delineating the former border of the of the avoid area square that you formerly had saved. Place the cursor on one of its borders, right click, and then select cut or simply press the delete button to make the black square disappear and go away. The program will then route you through the interior perimeter of those cities and towns as before.

Hint: You can use this simple tip to trick the software into avoiding any restricted roads or roads with low clearances or low weight bridges that you want to avoid also.

 

where do you put the unzipped folder? in MS Trips