GPS / CB Choices

CaptJD wrote:
Thank you for all the advise guys.
CB wasn't going to be my main radio since I am a HAM. I wanted to have the CB in order to talk to truckers along the highway and get a better road condition reports etc.

Last week we decided to buy a small motorhome at a dealership in Arkansas. We rented a car and drove there from CA and once we got the RV we drove it back to home in CA. about 4500 miles in 5 days. At some point along the route there and back weather got a little bit scary and at those moments I wish I could've talk to oncoming truckers to find out how was the conditions where they are coming from.

Otherwise my hobby activity is HAM radio. But I did not know about truckers using GMRS nowadays! That's good to know. CB technology is sooo ancient nowadays but I thought if that's the only way to contact maximum number of truckers along the routes, so be it!

I'll continue to investigate.

Weather and road conditions concerns and understandably so, but today unlike the golden yrs of CB where truckers and CBs were splashed across the big screen in movie houses in movies like "Convoy" and "Smokey and the Bandit" there isn't as much trucker chatter happening on CB frequencies..

The advent of low cost Cellphones and plans plus the use of licensed commercial business band equipment has really reduced the "need" for truckers to use a primary communications method.

Truckers are busy, that is their job, most now days get paid by the mile and the rules of the road now days requires them to use electronic books, GPS tracking and under tight delivery deadlines.. Doesn't leave much room for chit chatting..

Oh sure, there will be some out that might but in the yrs I had a CB in a vehicle and my commute was an hr long each way I never once heard a "weather report", "road conditions" report, Smokey" report or "accident" report.. Vary rarely did I even hear a trucker "chatting" to another trucker.

To put that into perspective, that was from 1980-2003 and in that time I wore out quite a few vehicles racking up 25K miles each yr on Interstate and big city driving. 23 yrs and 575,000 miles later, I decided the CB bands had died and I was no longer bothering with installing Ham and CB.. The Ham equipment won the fight and I quietly played "taps" in my mind as the CB got quietly shoved into a basement cabinet.. From 2003-2020 I have racked up another 425,000 miles and I have not regretted the decision of shelving the CB from my vehicles.

Yes, I get it, folks get anxious about weather, road conditions, smokeys, and traffic jams.. But even IF you were to get the "heads up" would you be able to "do something about it?" like turn around and find an alternate route?

Many times taking alternate routes can just be worse than waiting out an accident or bad weather.. Many times alternate routes takes you into places that a RV shouldn't be or adds hrs and hundreds of mile to the trip.. Sometimes you might just get stuck on a limited exit road like a Toll road and have no way of turning around.

Then toss in a CB that on a good day you might get 1 to 4 miles worth of advanced notice and at todays speed that is less than 3 minutes to establish conversation and exchange it before losing contact.. Not enough advanced time to turn around, change direction, make alternate plan.

IF you were to decide to get a CB, buy a handy talky version with a mag mount.. No installation needed, it is a plug and go thing.. But even that to me is a waste of money..