Directions Over The Air
For now at least, no one offers the holy grail of driver navigation: up-to-the-minute, traffic-sensitive, truck-oriented maps and directions delivered wirelessly to a truck cab. But Maptuit of Burlington, Mass., is moving in that direction.
Maptuit has integrated its off-board routing and navigation service with popular truckload software packages to provide door-to-door directions automatically at a driver's request. Dispatchers need not be involved.
"We've been up and out for a little over six months now," said Max Stevens-Guille, Maptuit's senior vice president marketing,
Maptuit's FleetNav product is specifically designed for truckload operations and integrates with popular software packages from TMW Systems, McLeod Software and Innovative Commuting. According to Stevens-Guille, Maptuit is talking with Maddocks Software as well.
FleetNav communicates with drivers over the fleet's mobile communications system, usually Qualcomm's OmniTRACS. Directions appear on the driver's screen.
According to Stevens-Guille, FleetNav doesn't rely on a single mapping database, but combines data available from mapping specialists.
"We've built a technology that stitches together all those data sets in order to give us the best view of things. That's an immense amount of data that certainly does not fit on a CD ROM. The advantage of hosting it centrally is that this is accessible to anybody and there's no changing CDs or that kind of thing," Stevens-Guille said.
Stevens-Guille said FleetNav costs under $20 a month per truck, depending on the size of the fleet, but saves on the order of $50 in tolls and 200 miles per month for a very rapid return on investment.
Stevens-Guille said FleetNav currently covers the U.S. and Canada; Mexico should be available soon. Maptuit customers include well-known truckload carriers Cannon Express and Stevens Transport.
Free Directions On The Web
There are quite a few sites offering routing directions for free on the web, but they differ greatly from one another. Only a handful are truck-sensitive and it's always a good idea to check directions provided with a printed map you trust. Some sites occasionally turn out convoluted routes that ignore obvious choices the Interstates for example.
Here are some we visited:
www.promiles.com
Click on Free Mileages, then More Options. ProMiles provides turn-by-turn, city-to-city directions, a zoomable map and other helpful information — such as fuel prices by state.
www.mile.com
Prophesy Transportation Solutions, Inc. offers mileage, truck-sensitive routing, city-to-city directions and state-by-state mileage totals in an easy-to-use format without registration.
www.mapquest.com
Mapquest provides address-to-address directions in choices of plain text, text with a single map or text with small detail maps illustrating each turn. Routes are not truck sensitive.
www.freetrip.com
It isn't truck sensitive, but its city-to-city directions are both handy and entertaining. They come with selectable recommendations for travel plazas, restaurants and lodging along the way — all graded by price. Try running a trip selecting foreign cuisine restaurants with entrees over $20.
www.mapblast.com
Like Mapquest, Mapblast provides street-level directions and the ability to locate businesses along the way — everything from auto dealers to furniture stores. Quick, but not truck-sensitive.
www.expedia.com
This site run by Microsoft offers door-to-door directions and quickly zoomable maps, but refused to accept the test address we used at other tests and insisted on sending us to St. Louis instead. Non-truck-sensitive.
