Hello all,
Im currently in the process of moving from Bus Driving to HGV and have some questions reagrding route planning.
What is the best device to use for route planning? Is there anything that will tell you bridge heights and enable you to create a custom route? Which will then give you directions like a Sat Nav?
How do you all go about planning routes?
Best device is combination of mk1 eyeball and brain.
then…
Bridge height map (i prefer AA truckers, others prefer Philips), you decide the route, no one else and certainly not a pocket sized street map of the country.
Then by all means enter the destination on a sat nav of some description and see if one of the optional routes agrees with you, assuming it does all good, let it run during the journey using it as an assistant helping you on junctions along the route that You, not It, planned.
We’ve had this discussion dozens of times, i would advise anyone to plan their own route and use the satnav for what its good at, as an assistant, it should never be in charge.
Some people here spend nearly a weeks wages on a big name lorry specific satnav, IMHO you will not learn your way around the country following the instructions of a machine blindly and there is no reason whatsoever to spend anything like £300, though a simple large screen all purpose Garmin with free for life DigiTraffic (its must be digitraffic and not standard traffic) circa £150, would be the very maximum i would spend, purely for being able to spot traffic issues continually without using up mobile data.
Why i suggest those Garmins (and do check any satnav you want to buy has this option) is because you can run the ‘traffic’ screen alone without any destination being entered at all,and scroll the entire country for traffic issues even before you’ve peeked at the map, not its not as up to date as traffic on google maps, but keeping traffic live throughout you journey on google will be using your data up, course you may have unlimited data in which case just use google on your phone.