Anyone have any experience with the Rand McNally 700 or PC Miler or World Nav.?
Any ideas on a better trucker's GPS?
Thanks for any info. Been years since I posted, finally found name and password.
Thanks
I have the PC Miler 450.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. Prior to getting it I was using a garmin nuvi 250w car gps. Compared to the garmin this new one fails miserably on knowing where actual addresses or poi's are. For example I searched the poi's and found the Petro in Scranton (dupont) PA. As part of the description it says I-81 exit 178-b yet it thinks it's on the other side of the Interstate and will route you to take exit 178-a and put you in a field. On the same note addresses are often on the wrong block and other oddities of the same type.
One of the great features with the pc miler is multi stop routes. You can put in a seemingly endless amount of stops and way points. Unfortunately it seems to discard them once you get close to the stop or waypoint. An example would be where I was near a stop but had to follow a detour because of construction. At the point I went off the route I was still two city blocks from the stop but it dropped it and continued routing me to the next one.
You can search for poi's near where you are, near another city or on your route. When you search on your route it will only search the next 30 miles or 50 miles(can't remember which) yet when searching near where you are or near another city it searches within a 2 hundred mile radius. This seems a bit backwards to me. Once you have the results of this search you can show them on the map, unfortunately it just shows you a map and does not show your route on that map nor does it indicate your current location. It's the same when adding a stop to your route, you can pick on map but it does not show your route on the map.
Those things are relatively minor I guess, as are a number of others that don't come to mind right now, but as this is a 3rd generation product and the old garmin was so much better in these things I expected better.
The truck routing is pretty good but is far from reliable. It has tried to take me on a number of roads where trucks are not supposed to go.
It has lane assist and something called clear turn which are excellent for major interchanges. The clear turn shows an image of all the lanes where the split is and so far has been flawless.
It is very good for know exactly where you are in relation to the map which is why it's a surprise it is so far off on addresses.
The screen is excellent and the routing is quick.
I know there's a lot more I could say about it but basically it comes down to this. It's not there yet. It fails in areas the garmin did not fail in and when it comes to truck specific routing it has been wrong more times than I would expect from a 3rd generation product.
steve, i sent you an email. i have the 7" Rand McNally model and I'm happy with it. it routes you on truck-specific highways and you can change your weight, height, width etc any time. it has all truck specific points of interest (truck shops, truck stops) and it keeps track of miles traveled in each state. i use the latter feature all the time for my fuel mileage reports.
Wow...I was looking to buy the PC Miler GPS as PC Miler has a reputation for being the industry standard. After seeing the review and the great features the Rand McNally GPS really looks like the way to go. Thanks a lot Tracer, you're really starting to cost me some money now. LOL
