Good Sam Club Open Roads Forum: Technology Corner: Motor Home GPS Phone AP


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katysdad

Virginia

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Joined: 08/03/2010

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Posted: 07/18/22 07:24pm

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Trucker Path, Hammer are two of several trucking apps that will allow you to enter vehicle dimensions (height, length, weight) and route you around these obstacles and keep you on routes designed for larger units. Designed for the trucking industry they will also work for you. I have used several for Pickup w/38 ft tall cargo trailer and have no complaints. I'm sure there are others that work as well. Like Gdetrailer said these apps are not a replacement for watching road signs and conditions. Waze,Garmin and others were designed more for passenger vehicles to get from A to B quickest route possible not factoring vehicle size. Waze and Google maps do help with realtime traffic conditions and will change routes while driving but will put you in a tight spot with large rigs if not careful.

Dodge Ram 3500 DRW Diesel

Gdetrailer

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Joined: 01/05/2007

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Posted: 07/19/22 09:47am

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Sandy & Shirley wrote:

Not exactly true!

The Garmin has an RV mode where I was able to input the length, width, and height of my motor home. That is supposed to be the advertised reason for choosing the “Garmin RV 890 GPS” unit and running it in RV/Motor home mode!

Yes the street through Lancaster was not RV impassable, but the recommended route to use the river ferry was impassable. I double checked with the owner of the campground and ferry. Motor homes and not allowed on the ferry and that is something that an RV rated GPS should know!

If the GPS can’t take me to passable routes, I should just continue to use WAZE, it’s free!

PS: before the motor home we also had a 38 foot fifth wheel towed by a Ford F350, long bed, crew cab!

Just because you can "input" something, it doesn't mean the device will or can use that input.

Garmin RV is a "consumer" level GPS, not commercial, industrial or Gov.. It depends on the quality of the map maker. The map maker gathers only so much information and detail and on a consumer level it will be missing a lot of data.

As another poster has stated, there are trucker GPS units and Apps that may have more details, but those also often lead truckers down the wrong narrow roads and into low bridges.

GPS is only a "tool" just like paper maps and paper Atlas's and even your own eyes, there is no excuse for blindly following every instruction that comes from a computer generated output.. As you have found out, it can be faulty.

Computers are great up to the point of the faults of those who have written the code, inputted the data.. The computer is only a smart as the one that wrote the program.

You can of course plan your trip out ahead on paper maps, then for any point in the trip you can search Google maps for that town. Within Google maps they give you a nice birds eye view in real photos and if you notice a lot of small roads, twists and turns and stop lights you can plan alternative routes around the problem areas all ahead of your trip.

Paper maps give you very specific road size legends and very small and one lane roads don't exist on them.. Garmin and many other GPS units WILL have those roads that you will never fit on, but will not have enough map data to not route you on those roads. It is simply following it's programing which attempts to route you on the fastest route which is often the most direct route..

Some towns even acknowledge that there is traffic or size limitations and will by posting road signs route you onto designated alternative truck routes.. Those also are not on your GPS..

You know you have a tall heavy RV, watch for weight limit signs, see a road posted with a 10 ton limit, you don't want to take your 20,000 lb RV down that road.. GPS isn't going to know that either..