[Mythois]

Does anyone have any experience with Truck specific GPS, I've been told that the
Cobra 7700 and the Garmin 465T are good, but that was the salesman. Does anyone have direct experience with these units or anyother?

[Glad Hand]

Originally Posted by Mythois

Does anyone have any experience with Truck specific GPS, I've been told that the
Cobra 7700 and the Garmin 465T are good, but that was the salesman. Does anyone have direct experience with these units or anyother?

Although they bill themselves as being truck specific in reality they are car GPS devices enhanced with truck specific features, and even the truck specific features are full of bugs and half the time won’t work as advertised.

In any event, none of them do truck specific routing nearly good enough to be relied upon, so you still have to use them with a MCRA exactly like you must do with a car GPS device. However, every time you enter a rest area, weigh station, or truck stop the entire remaining route will get recalculated and each time the route gets recalculated, which inevitably will be several times each work day, the recalculated routes could possibly change depending on how close or how far away you are from your final destination, making it almost impossible to use it together with a MCRA.

Additionally, if your company supplies legal truck routes at the time of dispatch like most companies today do, you are much better off using a GPS solution that enables you to easily customize those company supplied legal truck routes in your GPS solution and then save them. That way you won’t have to worry about the truck specific routing, and whatever solution you decide to use, please make sure the auto-rerouting feature can be toggled off. Auto rerouting is a great feature for 4 wheelers, but for drivers of 73-foot long 18-wheelers it is a disaster waiting to eventually happen. And if too many greenhorn truck drivers get in too many accidents, the use of GPS devices will inevitably be outlawed for everyone and no one will be able to use them.

On the 7700 I read a review by a Canadian driver the other day that bought one to replace his old Tom Tom. Anyway, after using it for several weeks, he relegated it to back up status and started using his old Tom Tom again. He also said the 7 inch screen would obstruct his field of vision as well. His final opinion was that the 7700 was not nearly ready to be released and he wished he would have returned it before it was too late to get his money back.

On the 465T, my brother in law went from super thrilled to super pissed off in about a week’s time. He ended up returning it and getting his money back.

Anyway, I kept telling him not to waste his money and just get a laptop with Streets & Trips, but since he never used computers before he was afraid of them. In any event, after he returned the 465T and got his money back he bought a used Dell laptop on ebay and now he is a Facebook fanatic and loves Streets & Trips.