Travel routes

[teckenoff@gmail.com]

I have a 40 ft. 5th wheel and towing it over some roads may be tedious as the GPS directs. Is there a way to find the best route when towing 8 tons. 

[manholt]

Welcome to the Forum.

Not that I know off.  Your towing 8 T & I'm driving 30T + toad....roads all change every year due to weather and construction!  I've been driving Class A's for 54 years & its a rolling earthquake! 😂

[rayin]

Yes, your GPS, if designed for RV use, should have options the user may set to tell the GPS the height, length, and weight of your RV. The GPS then compares that information to road information in the mapping software and only displays routes that meet the requirements/parameters you entered.

If you have a standard GPS for autos,  purchase a Trucker's Road Atlas so you may compare the GPS to the yellow-highlighted truck routs in said Atlas. Better yet would be to purchase an RV GPS to make trip-planning much easier and convenient.

[richard5933]

I agree about the trucker's road atlas. A good one is the Rand McNally Motor Carrier's Atlas, and it has lots of information besides maps such as low height warnings, restricted weight warnings, etc. If you're following a designated truck route you technically should be okay.

When I went through training on my first job driving semi, they spent a great deal of time leaning route planning. No one resource will tell you what you need to know, so you'll have to use multiple resources.

When I was driving semi, I'd start with the smartphone and find the destination on Google Maps. Using the satellite view I could determine which specific entrance to use, the conditions of the surrounding areas, etc. For some locations the mailing address was not the address for the entrance needed, so I'd use Google Maps to obtain the GPS coordinates of where I actually wanted to go. I've even used the satellite view to help me find the best exit route our of some really large truck stops where I couldn't see the exit from where I was parked.

Using Google Street View allowed me to do a virtual drive-by of any parts of the route I had questions about. It even allowed me to scan the road for bridge height signs, 'no trucks' signs, etc. before heading down any unknown stretches of road. Great to be able to see these things before you have to back up out of a problem area.

The next step was to program the destination into my Garmin GPS unit. It was a unit designed for heavy vehicles and took height/weight/length into consideration while computing the route. I'd then inspect every leg of the route that the Garmin presented me to be sure that it didn't take me down any problem areas I identified in the first steps.

The last step was to double check the Garmin route against the trucker's atlas to make sure that it had me on approved/designated truck routes.

For me as a new truck driver it took 10-15 minutes to do my route planning for a destination. I could get it done quicker for routes I'd done before, but even those required some work to ensure that truck routes didn't change or new construction projects started. For an RV, whether you're driving a Class A or pulling a large 5th wheel, you should probably figure spending about the same amount of time planning your day's driving route. There is no easy/quick way to do this properly.