On non urgent consigments drivers are told to use the free national roads in France,i used to all the time,more fun,better places to eat,pull off at any time,no high cost recovery,as you could limp the motor to a garage nearby.
hi mate. i dont think you can use many ov the national routes nowadays 
i use to run them myself 10 15 yrs ago until the gendarmmes put a stop to it. some great routes cut the toll costs and like you say great restaraunts. when they stopped you useing them it closed a lot ov restaraunts down .
The trouble is that they put a lot of weight limits on the National roads, forcing you back onto the autoroute instead of being able to go through the towns. This added so much time to the journey that it became not worth doing.
toby1234abc:
On non urgent consigments drivers are told to use the free national roads in France,i used to all the time,more fun,better places to eat,pull off at any time,no high cost recovery,as you could limp the motor to a garage nearby.
Company i was driving for doing Itie in the early 90s, only gave enough running money to cover the essential autoroutes and i still managed a bit of a fiddle- didnt we all in those days?
As for “pull off at any time” 
. . . thats up to the driver isnt it ? 
You can still use a lot of them and where they’ve stuck a limit on the main national there’s usually a good D road nearby. A lot of towns with limits have passable detours once you get to them too. 
GBE Transalliance forbid drivers to use the peage and I still have a route planner which gave us an alternative. We needed a planner to authorise a payment, even though we had telepass and that was as recent as 2009
Nice if you can get a non urgent take your time load! Most seem to be get it there asap these days.
pointless.
on the motorway you may get 9 to 11 mpg.
on the nationals you’ll get 6 to 8 mpg.
and as it’s cheaper to drive a truck on a french motorway than a car nowadays, i can’t see why anyone would consider using the nationals.
I pay my own tolls these days so hardly ever use the péages. I can go from here, 50 kms north of Périgueux, to Calais for just €7.40 to get round Orléans. If time isn’t an issue, and I generally start early enough to make it not so, I now leave at Chateauroux and head straight for Blois and then on to Chartres - no tolls at all, and good eating places 
Although weight limits no longer bother me anyway you should be aware that you can run with a heavy if you are heading to a resto.
I have never been stopped or fined for running on a weight limit national road.The rumour was they could check the CMR to see where you are going to,but never with me.
Limeyphil,the tarmac on the toll is high class,the truck floats along with no noise,it is the expensive stuff,and the density of the holes in the porous materials when it is laid down.You do not get tired as well.
limeyphil:
pointless.
on the motorway you may get 9 to 11 mpg.
on the nationals you’ll get 6 to 8 mpg.
and as it’s cheaper to drive a truck on a french motorway than a car nowadays, i can’t see why anyone would consider using the nationals.
Good point Phil. I have to use them and for the love of god why anyone with a calculator would choose to do so boggles the mind. 
The amount gearshifting, braking and steering completely negates any cost savings.
For example, I ran down the motorway to St Tropez last month with a slightly wide but light load taking about a day and a half at about 11.5mpg. I came back with a slightly wider one, under ■■■■■■ up the nationals, taking 1/2 a day longer,down to 8mpg and I lost count at 50 roundabouts alone on day 2 Oh yeah nationals are way better
we use to use the nationals up from italy .( bourg en bresse . besancon . epinal. ) not a good route loaded with marble on A frames 
. but hey thats the way we was told to come back. nice scenary plenty ov restaraunts 
Do we have a source for this info? It just sounds completely crazy to me.
Spardo:
Although weight limits no longer bother me anyway you should be aware that you can run with a heavy if you are heading to a resto.
I have heard that or more than one occasion, but is it actually enshrined in law somewhere? I don’t wish to sound disrespectful, especially as you have a very good track record of knowing what’s what in France but it has always seemed as though it might be a “MMTM”.
Harry Monk:
Spardo:
Although weight limits no longer bother me anyway you should be aware that you can run with a heavy if you are heading to a resto.I have heard that or more than one occasion, but is it actually enshrined in law somewhere? I don’t wish to sound disrespectful, especially as you have a very good track record of knowing what’s what in France but it has always seemed as though it might be a “MMTM”.
No idea Harry, perhaps I should have said ‘…you can probably run with a heavy…’ .
Not exactly MMTM, more nobody ever said differently and as I have always followed the dictum myself without a pull and seen the full restos smack in the middle of long weight limited routes, I assume it is so. Thank you for allowing me to avoid dropping myself (or more to the point someone else) in it.
I gave more weight to the theory the day a ministry man shrugged off my 15 minute (sans disc) run a couple of hours into a daily break because the usual resto across from where I was loading was closed. He merely said without waiting for my explanation ‘pour manger?’, and then ‘OK’.
I always said that you could get away with most things in Italy if it involved a woman but in France if it involved eating.
we have toll box,s for france ,spain and italy. but use a mixture of n roads and autoroute. that way you get the best of both worlds. i still use marans on the way to transit la rochelle never had a prob… cheers all
vannrouge:
we have toll box,s for france ,spain and italy. but use a mixture of n roads and autoroute. that way you get the best of both worlds. i still use marans on the way to transit la rochelle never had a prob… cheers all
Yes, a classic route. several good restos on that road.
I may be up that way myself in a week or so, to Grues, north of La Rochelle, so it will give me a chance to check some of them out.
When i drove for them this was never the case.
But Kevin Hopper has changed the company a lot if CM is to be believed! maybe not for the better maybe for the better. But as people have said a calculator should work out the better route.
You only have to look at the Autoroute traffic and peages to see if the queues are cars or lorries. If there is a reasonable RN alternative then the French Poids Lourd avoid the peage.
I think at the same time as we were told to boycott the peages, so were ND