Hey up - Well i got a call last week from the agency asking if i wanted a weeks work driving the 7.5 tonne truck delivering building materials all over the u.k. I accepted and everything was going fine until Wednesday afternoon!! Id just got back into the yard and ran up to the office too see where the load needed to be dropped then ran back to the truck and my tom tom 510 had been nicked!! 
Id left the truck unlocked for 2 minutes and the thieving ■■■■■■■■had it away…
bad luck mate Im hoping you had it pin protected
No mate i didn’t - i will make sure i do that when the new one arrives though…
Hard lines!
I had exactly the same happen a few weeks ago…
Normally I always put the satnav in my pocket and lock cab, BUT the one occasion I did’nt… some cheeky tw*t nicked it from off the windscreen.
Maybe I got complacent and didn’t take as much care as I should have. I won’t happen again!!! 
if your out the cab lock it trust no (brb)
get a map its cheaper or can’t you read them
Ah Dodger…
The old satnav Vs. maps thing… it’s been done a 1000 times fella. Moving on.
I tend to use both, and yes I can read a map… 
Thanks for your comments.
mmm… and I said i I wouldn’t bite… 
dodger1974:
get a map its cheaper
Really? To cover the same area a SatNav does in paper maps, to local street level, will cost a hell of a lot more than a SatNav does. 
Coffeeholic:
dodger1974:
get a map its cheaperReally? To cover the same area a SatNav does in paper maps, to local street level, will cost a hell of a lot more than a SatNav does.
Exactly!!! I have the truckers atlas but if i was too buy every a 2 z it would costs hundreds plus id need a suitcase too carry them all. Sat nav is essential to a professional driver these days i spent a year reading bloody maps when i did multi drop and i wont be returning to it, sat nav not only does the obvious, most now have speed camera alerts plus traffic announcements it’s just makes the job easier for me personally… Just wished id still had mine 
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–
Sat nav is essential to a professional driver these days
I wouldn’t go that far. It’s an option, sure, but not an essential. Now against your one year with maps I have nigh on eight, and whilst I admit that means I’ve had a good long time during which to collect 50-odd A-Zs, I have no intention of changing whilst I’m in my existing job.
Sat Nav is a great tool so long as you can guarantee to have the right postcodes. An awful lot of our addresses either have half a postcode, the wrong postcode, or no postcode at all. A lot of the street names we get are subtly wrong as well, so you have to find the right area and then work it out by looking at the surrounding roads and see what sounds similar. All of this stuff happens because we’re a shipping line, and the addresses are taken down at the other end, by people who aren’t familar with the country…And I’ve lost count of the number of times those of our lads who have gone over to Sat Nav have rung me up so I can tell them where they’re going off my paper maps.
Personally, I also find that if someone is constantly telling me where to go - be that a passenger or an electronic voice - I never learn the way to anywhere, and therefore can’t come up with more efficient routes by local knowledge, built over years. That knowledge has saved my neck more times than I care to think about (see problems above), and I’d hate to stop building it.
Sat Nav is just a compact, electronic map. Remember that, and use it that way and you’ll be fine - but rely on it and you’ll be yet another headline.
Sat nav is essential to a professional driver these days
What an utter load of TOSH
It is just another tool which can be used(if chosen) in conjunction with others by a driver. Personally I choose not to use it,at the moment,as I feel I do not need to. 
Todays generation of “Electronic newbies” rely on it to much to make up for lack of experience and,in some cases, intelligence As Lucy has pointed out, if you just blindly follow a voice you will LEARN nothing
The number of drivers I come across who couldn’t find there way out of paper bag if they don’t have the postcode for it is just bewildering
They have a computer changing gears for them so they actually end up in the correct one
Traction control and ABS constantly correcting mistakes they don’t even know they are making and so have no idea about the dynamics of how to actually drive a truck "SAFELY
Now they rely on a voice to prompt them at every junction.Which makes for a lack of looking and planning ahead.Let alone using there eyes and seeing things.
OH YEAH they are ALL Essentials
Can’t imagine why so many trucks are having accidents these days
montana man:
As Lucy has pointed out, if you just blindly follow a voice you will LEARN nothing
Very true, when I used to use my SatNav I tended to turn the voice off, unless I wanted someone to talk to/argue with. The first SatNav thing I had didn’t even have a voice option.
montana man:
The number of drivers I come across who couldn’t find there way out of paper bag if they don’t have the postcode for it is just bewildering
I don’t get that either, what do you need the full post code for? Surely the most you need is the first bit so you know the town the road is in and usually you wouldn’t even need that much. My SatNav unit only does the first 4 characters of a postcode anyway. Name, road, maybe number in road and town are surely all that is needed to find somewhere.
The other thing i don’t get is the bridge height atlas thing either. Yes I can see the need if you pull high trailers but for regular 4 - 4.3 metres I don’t see it. I’ve seen drivers spending ages planning their whole route in advance, checking the height of every single bridge along the way. Where is the sense of adventure, just get in and go and check the signs along the way. I’ve never used a map with bridge heights on it in my entire driving career, I think it must be a generation thing because I’m pretty sure when I started in '84 bridge height maps were not available. Never hit a bridge, never had to reverse from a low bridge, never had to make miles of detours because of encountering a low bridge, eyeballs and road signs never let you down.
Coffeeholic:
Very true, when I used to use my SatNav I tended to turn the voice off, unless I wanted someone to talk to/argue with.
Probably the only “LOGICAL” female you could argue with
The other thing i don’t get is the bridge height atlas thing either. Yes I can see the need if you pull high trailers but for regular 4 - 4.3 metres I don’t see it. … … Never hit a bridge, never had to reverse from a low bridge, never had to make miles of detours because of encountering a low bridge, eyeballs and road signs never let you down.
Exactly Neil ,me too:D and the speed cameras as well. Easy answer to that one being keep your eyes open or don’t speed. They don’t protect against mobile ones anyway so whats the point
Tried using a sat nav once as it was in the truck I was driving. I gave up in the end … didn’t like being told what to do. Have never used once since and can assure you, I have far better things to spend my money on than one of them.
Travelling with an old driver once we started to come into some traffic. He started to wonder out load if we’d be better off getting off the motoway a junction early and was clearly trying to plan a route in his head. As passenger I said I’d have a look at his map, where was it? He replied that he’d never owned a road atlas in his life. Knew his way around the country pretty well so didn’t see the need!
I’ve lost touch with him now but I doubt he considers satnav to be essential!
sorry to hear about your sat nav, its an expensive lesson about locking your cab at all times, or for an easier life, dont take anything valuable in your cab with you (not at all practical for anyone who isnt a day driver, i understand)
my view on the technology:
satnav has no concept of time of day, congestion, local knowledge, season, road closures etc and there are many more faults
until it does, it isnt worth a toss in my opinion
what it does do is allow muppets to give it the - big shoulders i know what im doing - attitude, and get themselves into trouble
and as has been mentioned, it does promote a degree of lazyness. Personally for me its boring enough with semi auto/auto gearboxes, 56mph speed limiters etc without removing the need to even think about where you are going. I like building knowledge of different areas, feels like you are learning something every day and it keeps you interested, besides sometimes its nice to find a different route to somewhere regular, just to mix things up a bit.
yes if you were to buy a street level map of the UK in one go, it would cost you more than a satnav, but you accumulate maps as and when you need them, over a generally slow period of time, particularly if you work in only one geographical area, South East, South West etc
besides, dont we all love building our own dog eared annotated maps, with arrows, crosses, swear words, dead ends and no through road corrections all over it
besides, dont we all love building our own dog eared annotated maps, with arrows, crosses, swear words, dead ends and no through road corrections all over it
Yep. My Greater Manchester is so old I’ve had to draw big sections of the M60 on it and change the junction numbers on the rest…and many of my other maps have whole areas drawn on in biro, as well as laybys and god knows what else. They still work though, because I’ve been driving long enough to know my way around most major towns and cities without using them, only needing the map for when I get close in or to jog my memory.
and is lucy cant find it on her map she rings me and asks if i can find it on my satnav or a road that is near that she knows
the satnav getting knicked and is a problem and is also where have it on a mobile phone or pda/phone you wouldnt leave it in the cab
WildGoose:
satnav has no concept of time of day, congestion, local knowledge, season, road closures etc and there are many more faults
Neither do paper based maps. Although the SatNav does know the time of day and season.
alix776:
and is lucy cant find it on her map she rings me and asks if i can find it on my satnav
Busted.