can some one please recomend to me the best map to buy, i need one that is pretty detailed as i deliver to supermarkets in small villages and towns, the map i am using at the minute doesnt show alot of the places i am looking for…
if some one could give me a link or a name id appreciate it…
i see alot of people in here go for the aa atlas with bridge heights, is it also very detailed…
Have a look at a Philips Navigator, they are very detailed but are very large. Unfortunately they don’t have heights on them. The AA truckers is not so detailed. I have a Navigator that I mark with coloured stickers to denote weights, heights and the location of places that I may need to return too. I shall be getting an AA truckers map, but only really for the bridge height info.
maps are like spanners …you can have an adjustable…and it will do a job
Phililps navvy + collins + bridge heights + A-Z’s etc start collecting you’ll be soon fully tooled up
and be able to proudley count yourself as a competant driver…
I still don’t understand why everyone seems to rant about this Philip’s Navigator. It’s a load of [zb] unless you’re a farmer. It’s got every farm marked on it in the whole of Great Britain and the roads are in the wrong colours (motorways are pink, A-roads are grey and B-roads are white, or some other similarly ridiculous colour co-ordination) and doesn’t have bridge heights or anything else useful on it. Why spend your money on it when you could have the AA Truckers Atlas which is much better, roads in the right colours and half the price? 
Use the Navigator in the job im doing at present as i spend most of the day on roads that are not even B roads and in some cases nothing more than a stone track!
its very detailed but even that doesnt show everything so i use the county Philips streetmaps too. No real need for bridge heights as we dont run very high but i have one stashed in my bag too just in case
www.play.com are doing the navigator for £14.99 incl delivery still i think.
I use the collins for that exact reason,as for bridge heights/weight resrictions i use the road signs!
i’m tired:
I use the collins for that exact reason,as for bridge heights/weight resrictions i use the road signs!
I still have the big blue book from Sommerfield/kwicksave would that be any good for him, i assume thats where he’s working, or have all the store numbers changed?
With the loss of the kwikies and gaining sherburns stores the blue book is no longer used,you now get a printout when you need it so height limits shoudn’t be a problem.
we go on about Philips cos its 1-100,000 scale
oh and cos where dummies we have sat nav and know nothing about maps
My Navigator has Blue motorways, green trunk roads, pink a roads and yellowy orange b roads, all others are white. seems fine to me.
I also have about 20 street maps, all Philips ones as I only visit sites a handful of times.
and the roads are in the wrong colours
I suppose on your map they are either black or buff depending on whether it is concrete or tarmac. 
Rob K:
I still don’t understand why everyone seems to rant about this Philip’s Navigator. It’s a load of [zb] unless you’re a farmer. It’s got every farm marked on it in the whole of Great Britain and the roads are in the wrong colours (motorways are pink, A-roads are grey and B-roads are white, or some other similarly ridiculous colour co-ordination) and doesn’t have bridge heights or anything else useful on it. Why spend your money on it when you could have the AA Truckers Atlas which is much better, roads in the right colours and half the price?
This is weird. I always found mine to be the reserve atlas of choice. helpful when finding difficult to find small hamlets , villages and areas not mentioned on other maps. Distinguishing whether I should go down very minor routes and I have no doubt it has saved me hours and hours of time and shedfuls of money, kept me safe and helped me to become more efficient as a professional haulier. Now I know of course that this is all rubbish and am grateful to you for your invaluable opinion that has saved me the cost of renewing to the latest edition.
Once I sell my satnav and buy a yorkshire hovel with the proceeds I will undoubtably be a better person.
What would we do without you. What did we do without you.
I also find absolutely NOTHING wrong with the Navigator atlas, for general route finding.
But for close up place finding, you really can’t beat the County street atlases, once you’ve bought one for a county, you don’t need any other town plans, and I also mark points on it, like bridge heights and locations I have visited, with a high lighter pen, which means I can still see the detail, unlike using a biro.
Its taken me all night and the rest of today but I think I’ve worked out why our resident quality manager (take a bow Rob) doesnt like the navigator. He obviously doesnt do farms and small places because he cant get his [zb] large head down those narrow lanes as well as his [zb] 480 DAF.
only telling it how it is. 
By the sounds of it you lot need a trailor to carry your maps, a good driver can get about with just 4 maps.
1 road atlas 1 a-z of laandaan 1 of Machester and one of Birmingham, and thats only on a bad day 
The best map in the world is a local of the town or city your delivering to.
Or stop at the MSA and have a quick look at the one they have on the shelves.
Or if like me on one of my first trips daaaaawn to laaandaaan get a police ■■■■■■, for the life of me, could I get in to smithfield Market. Ended on the embankment saw one of the mets finest traffic patrols (when we still had some).
Bless is litt5le cotton socks did he not just ■■■■■■ me with the blues and twos on (well the blues anyway, I wasn’t that important)right in to smithfield. perfect timing got my 9 off got tipped at 3am and got over to bury st edmunds with 6 drops on the way ready for tip reload and back home to sunny preston the night after.
Used to work for british beef at walton summit, guess what I was carrying yes you’ve guessed it LAMB
I often think that I could increase the payload by turfing out the maps, however they all stay in the lockers until required. Unfortunately being sent into Kent in the morning could involve something in Hetfordshire or Berkshire or similar in the afternoon at the drop of a hat. As my work is not delivering to major stores, I often have to find out of the way places. Hence the 20+ street maps. Not that I need them much, but they are then when I do.
As my work is not delivering to major stores, I often have to find out of the way places
Ditto, hence I now have nearly 60 of them, covering most of the UK.
Apart from london and brum I dont really use AZ;s anymore, so my total mapload consists of 2 AZ;s, 1 navvy, 1 truckers with bridge heights. one pocket sized GB (so I can look at it on the move) Oh and an expanded london down to m25 level. For the rest I use laptop with latest autoroute plus Route 66 as a backup and a garmin quest satnav.
All my az’s, county maps and so on currently fill a large box weighing about the same as a sack of spuds and live in my daughters house as I did’nt bring em when we moved to save space . I have been strangly reluctant to get rid of them as I keep thinking they will be needed one day but Its just clinging to the past and its safe enough as its unlikely that the satnav and laptop both malfunction at the same time. Think I’ll carboot em soon,(unless someone wants to make me an offer!!) I,ve got loads of continental ones too the only ones worth keeping are the Milan bible, Paris streetlevel, Dutch TNT, Belg Stratenatlas and the various country main routes.
the thing I have found is that I clung to the maps as a comfort and once I learnt to trust the lappy and satnav and more importantly realised that you could manage without all those maps it creates so much more room for other things and means moving wagons was a doddle. (before this I used to get a quote from Pickfords!!!
daneinter:
the thing I have found is that I clung to the maps as a comfort and once I learnt to trust the lappy and satnav and more importantly realised that you could manage without all those maps it creates so much more room for other things
I agree. I haven’t carried a single paper based map for at least 3 - 4 years. I just went with the map in my head in conjunction with a SatNav. These days I guess I am using a paper map again but it is only the sheet of A4 paper showing where the store is that I get given by Asda, the hand drawn map showing the customers location DHL give me or the printed list of directions - with no map - that Sainsbury’s hand out.
If they fail there is always 118118. 
Lucy:
As my work is not delivering to major stores, I often have to find out of the way places
Ditto, hence I now have nearly 60 of them, covering most of the UK.
Lucy
I used to do containers and only needed the 4 maps.
I used to do multi drop on an artic with any thing fom 30 to 40 drops a week on and didn’t need all those maps.
I reckon you got about 200 quids worth of maps that you may use each once or twice a year max, maybe some a little more.
Now they the maps are updated yearly and if you want to keep up with the latest roads you got to buy the new a-z that could work out at 200 quid a year.
As i said the best map is a local, the first fuel place you come to, a copper or better still the old guy who you can tell has lived in the town or city all his life who can’t wait to share his knowledge with a pantechnicon driver to get him to his destination the best possible way.
If you feel that insecure about your sense of direction or your social skills you stick to a brief case full of maps that hardly get used.
I know what I would rather spend my 200 quid on.
Ah, but if you get them on expenses.