Sunday, January 20, 2013

Red Barchetta

And they turn purple when you click them
NYSE: NAV
When I started here a year ago, company trucks were predominantly red, some blue mixed in maybe 1 in 20.  Most were Freightliners.  The new ProStars for the Flatbed and Specialized division were silver.  O/O's had their share of diversity but they were in a small minority.  The incoming flow of new power units were a mix of Freightliner Cascadias and International ProStars.

A few months ago incoming went to full-on ProStars.  I guess they found something they liked.  My guess is it had something to do with Daimler's dozen-ish recalls on new model Cascadias in the last 2 years.  Several of which included the DEF system, which the ProStars don't have.  Looking around the highways it seems that a LOT of companies are making the same switch.  Unfortunately it looks like the factory in Escobedo ran out of red paint.  Recently HQ started making exceptions to our motto.
Game over, man.

 Serina 2.0

Not an O/O? You need simplicity.
My Nuvi 550 was running on maps from 2008 and had its list of debilitating wear and tear.  Thus I was hesitant to load on 2013 maps instead of just getting a new unit with lifetime maps. It's been a long time coming but my research wasn't done in time for my Christmas wish list.  Lucky for me I had about $50 saved up on loyalty fuel points having not spent a single one since July.  When the Garmins (some of them) went on sale at Pilot/Flying J and I happened to have an afternoon-overnight layover at the one in Hagerstown, Maryland I decided to conduct my research.  Just my luck their computers wired to the loyalty card network crapped out moments before I made my decision and didn't come back online for about 5 hours.  The manager was kind enough to set my pick aside for me in the meantime.  Nice to have a parking spot 100' from the door and 65° out anyway.

I got the last 465, the first in the Nuvi line designed for trucks and a combined savings of $95 off the retail price.

Basically a dashboard mounted iPad.
I'll pass.

<While the Rand McNally TND series truck units are off-the-wall feature-packed, highly favored, and an interface about as simple (sarcasm) as that of Curiosity Rover, There is one thing Garmin has that they don't.  Easy waypoints.  I have to follow my (text) routing from HQ for each assignment and the ones automatically generated by GPS units rarely match it.  Thus, I have to manually drop flags where I need to go.

I had a few doubts at first but they're just typical nit-picky things.  Like admiring the Nuvi series for using the simple UI unchanged since they launched in 2007, I'm a little critical of bugs that have been left in 6 years later.

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