Use of portable GPS for Saturday Air

MADMAX

yard dawg
I use GPS on saturday air and map books. The good part of GPS is that you don't have to slow down looking for your turns and address. GPS will tell you how far and when to turn. Yodi gives my directions. No EDD on saturday, so you have to input the address in DIAD. Map books and GPS updates are about the same price. I still need both map and GPS lots of new houses and streets.
 
You couldn't find my house with a GPS unit. According to Map Quest , Yahoo maps, Google Maps and a couple of more of those sites my road don't exist. I've tried for 4 years to get the problem corrected. Anyone out there have any suggestions? According to the local fire dept. there are 2 different programs- one for the 911 system (my road is on that) and one for the general public that is usually behind the times----but 4 years behind? I find that hard to believe. My son-in-law showed up at my place with his fancy GPS unit but he ended up just putting it away after he got sent on wild goose chases twice trying to use it. By the way these aren't new roads or developmemts we are dealing with. They have been platted roads for 20 years that I know of.
Do you still use the old RR and Box number for your mail or do you have a physical address? Are you in a city limit or in the county? Although any address that is 911 related should be on maps and GPS systems, otherwise what is the point of either one ?
 

New Englander

Well-Known Member
I use GPS on saturday air and map books. The good part of GPS is that you don't have to slow down looking for your turns and address. GPS will tell you how far and when to turn. Yodi gives my directions. No EDD on saturday, so you have to input the address in DIAD. Map books and GPS updates are about the same price. I still need both map and GPS lots of new houses and streets.

Funny....I have only a map book and never needed GPS to deliver.
 

rod

Retired 22 years
Do you still use the old RR and Box number for your mail or do you have a physical address? Are you in a city limit or in the county? Although any address that is 911 related should be on maps and GPS systems, otherwise what is the point of either one ?

I have a physical address that consists of a number and street name. I am "in the country". Like I said - the fire dept could find my house (I actually went to the station and had them pull it up on their computer) but for some reason the street don't show up on the "for public use sites". I've contacted 2 different web sites that say they deal with gettting maps updated but it has been 4 years now and my street still don't exist. All I get from these sites are -"be patient". I worry that Ed McMahon won't be able to find my house and give me that million dollar check:happy-very:
 
I have a physical address that consists of a number and street name. I am "in the country". Like I said - the fire dept could find my house (I actually went to the station and had them pull it up on their computer) but for some reason the street don't show up on the "for public use sites". I've contacted 2 different web sites that say they deal with gettting maps updated but it has been 4 years now and my street still don't exist. All I get from these sites are -"be patient". I worry that Ed McMahon won't be able to find my house and give me that million dollar check:happy-very:
I have no idea of what you could do to get it updated then. Maybe being patient is the best they can do...
Don't worry about 'Ole Ed not finding you, if he gets his hands a million dollar check ain't nobody seeing that check. Ed needs the bucks.
 

Overpaid Union Thug

Well-Known Member
You are right but in my center Saturday Air is not put through EDD and my DIAD does not have all of the streets for the towns that we deliver on Saturday.

We have EDD but the saturday drivers still don't get EDD. Use a DIAD for the area of town that you aren't familiar with. That is what I always did. We only used between 2-4 drivers on saturdays. When we'd use 2 I'd usually end up with an area of town I wasn't real familiar with. I'd get the DIAD that the full-timer for that area used. I knew the main roads and some of the neighborhoods so the list of streets was helpful.
 

NaiveRapture

Learning the system
I am really glad I have GPS and google maps on my iPhone. It has saved me countless times! Not only has it enabled me to find things that weren't in my map book, but I have used it on road to show me the distance between two points so I can take a make more efficient routing decisions (mostly for stuff like Saturdays, not M-friend). I have a suction cup windshield mount for my phone so I can get quick directions while driving, which saves time.

I wouldn't say using one or the other is primarily better, but the two can be used in conjunction for great results! GPS is better for a stop or two if you just want to know where they are, and the map book will be better for multiple stops which should be closer together.
 

Babagounj

Strength through joy
Let me tell you a little tale of a sat driver who never used a map, she would go to the local ups store and ask for directions, make the stop & return to the store for directions to the next stop. She did this every sat. They finally printed up from Mapquest some of her stops, and since they all started from the store that is where she continued to start her run from.
She was a strange one, several time she was told to meet other drivers, yet she would drive right by them, forcing them to chase her. One time she refused to answer the DIAD so the local cops were called to find her.
 

Cementups

Box Monkey
Map books and GPS updates are about the same price.


last time I tried to do a Garmin update for my brother it was $75, but the last time i bought a map book it was $14.95. I may have only gone to public school, but the last time I checked that would be a 500% difference.
 

Babagounj

Strength through joy
Having done sat driving for over 20 yrs, I wish when I started GPS was around. Its a great tool, just like a good map is another great tool. But your memory is the best tool.
 
I supervise the saturday airsort in my building, i allow drivers to use gps. On saturday all rules are thrown aside and pretty much anything goes as long as the pkgs are delivered before 12. You can go home and take a nap for all i care, as long as your packages are in the diad scanned and delivered before 12. If 1 pkg comes up late i have to get scrutinized and bitched at by idiots. I never heard of the no gps rule.
 
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UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)

Well-Known Member
I supervise the saturday airsort in my building, i allow drivers to use gps. On saturday all rules are thrown aside and pretty much anything goes as long as the pkgs are delivered before 12. You can go home and take a nap for all i care, as long as your packages are in the diad scanned and delivered before 12. If 1 pkg comes up late i have to get scrutinized and bitched at by idiots. I never heard of the no gps rule. ?

You make a great first impression--I see nothing but success in your future.
 
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New Englander

Well-Known Member
last time I tried to do a Garmin update for my brother it was $75, but the last time i bought a map book it was $14.95. I may have only gone to public school, but the last time I checked that would be a 500% difference.

Thats not including the initial price of what ever your GPS is being used on. Stand alone, Cell phone or Laptop.

Though heck, hell yeah! It's all pretty darn close to $20 dropped on a map book!
 

Overpaid Union Thug

Well-Known Member
The "Maps" application that comes with the iPhone and iPod Touch would be a great tool. I had to go pick up my wife last night at a church dinner and she was in a neighborhood I wasn't familiar with. I tapped the home key and it instantly showed my location on a map. I typed the address of where I was going and it showed me on the map from my current address. Awesome.
 

landrick

Active Member
I have a physical address that consists of a number and street name. I am "in the country". Like I said - the fire dept could find my house (I actually went to the station and had them pull it up on their computer) but for some reason the street don't show up on the "for public use sites". I've contacted 2 different web sites that say they deal with gettting maps updated but it has been 4 years now and my street still don't exist. All I get from these sites are -"be patient".


Guess I'm wandering a little from the original topic here, but since it's come up...

A couple of the major providers of map data are Navteq and Tele Atlas. Both of them have web pages for reporting map inaccuracies. Don't know if these are the ones you tried, but...if you're bored someday, it might be a fun exercise. :happy2:

The navteq page is http://mapreporter.navteq.com/dur-web-external/ and the Tele Atlas page is http://mapinsight.teleatlas.com/mapfeedback/index.php. My personal experience is with Navteq, which supplies the map data for my Magellan GPS unit. I noticed a couple of errors in routing around my home (the most egregious being that it always wants me to turn onto this street that is actually an overhead bridge that doesn't even intersect with my road) and I reported them on the Navteq page. I figured that the reports would fall into a corporate black hole, never to be seen again...but, lo and behold, about 4 months later, I got two email messages saying something like "the errors you reported have been corrected and will be implemented in the next release of our map data." So...it CAN work, I guess, although this was for Los Angeles, and urban reports might take higher priority than rural ones. I don't know much about how the online map services (Google, Yahoo, etc) work, although I noticed a Google Maps page that said "map data by Tele Atlas." Anyway, might be worth a try. :wink2:
 
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