Adventures in navigation, part 1

Part of this job is finding your way around. A sample from this past week follows. The place names have been changed to protect the guilty and the merely amused.

Let's say you spent the night at a truck stop a few exits down from your next pickup, and you're ready to head that way. First things first--don't follow your GPS. I may write a long screed about that someday, but the short form is--GPS is not ready for trucker prime time. Not the ones I've had a chance to use or watch in use. They tend to send you down exotic and scenic shortcuts--and they don't always know about little things like low underpasses, bridges that won't hold your weight, or streets that are just plain illegal for a semi to follow. A GPS is nice for seeing where you are now, but don't trust the directions you get from the thing.

Usually you will get directions when you get your load information--written either by the customer or by another driver who found the way. In this case, you're told to take THIS highway into Paris, then turn right on Oxbridge Road, left on De Mille Street, and right on Connector Road. Eternalite should be on the left. Simple, right?

So you drive cheerfully into town and look for Oxbridge Road. And you don't find it. No surprise--you're only seeing street signs about every third intersection. Everybody here knows where they are, don't they?

After a time you reach the end of the highway you came in on. Fortunately you kept an eye open and made sure there was a place to turn the truck around. So back you go.

But first do a little thinking. Oxbridge Road. Well you grew up in small southern towns. You know that "Hooterville Road" often means "the road to Hooterville."

So get out the map. Is there a town called Oxbridge anywhere nearby?
Yep, there it is. And is there a road between Paris and Oxbridge?
Yep. And it's a major highway. And you passed it a mile or two ago.

First hurdle past.

So you go back, turn onto the highway also known as Oxbridge Road (if you're a local). Two streets up you see De Mille Street. So you make your turn and wend your way around the curve and back around the other curve--looking for something called Connector Road.

Only there isn't one. You go clear to the end of the street, make a guess about which way to turn, and find yourself within a hundred feet of a tiny two-lane road to nowhere.

Hastily you turn in to a small factory--the only place in sight with a parking lot big enough to turn around in. Then you go in and ask directions. (A professional driver is not ashamed to admit he's lost. It beats the alternative...) Only the people at the factory don't know where Connector Road is, either.

So you make a loop and watch more carefully. And reach the end of the street. This time you turn the other way, so you don't get stuck on that two-lane-to-nowhere again. Congratulations--you loop back to the main road without incident this time.

Now to ask directions again. Before you made your turn, you saw a place that does truck repairs. There will be room to pull in, and maybe they will know where this place is...

Well, they knew a few things.

1. Connector Road is on the map, but it doesn't exist yet. They'll build it one of these days, when the industrial park gets better built up. Meanwhile, if you shifted into eighteen-wheel drive and headed cross country across muddy farm fields, the right-of-way would take you right where you're trying to go.
2. There is a place that more or less matches what you're looking for. Here are the directions.

So you follow the new directions. Slowly. Carefully. With a grain of salt. As it turns out, they're wrong, but not VERY wrong. You pull up to a factory that seems to be in the right place, making the right kind of product. The name's wrong, but that's no big deal. Many of these places are making products for the big companies and labeling them appropriately. "Paris Candles" could easily be holding stuff for "Eternalite."

You pull in and cross the rain-swept yard to the shipping dept. A man is waiting inside. He shakes your hand and says "We aren't expecting a truck this week. Where are you really trying to go?"

Sigh.

You tell him. He grins and says, "We get guys trying to find that place all the time." And he tells you how to find it--on the other side of town.

Sigh.

So you follow his directions, just as carefully and just as suspiciously. And you reach another factory. This one is called "BrightNights, LLC." That sounds slightly encouraging. So you trudge through the rain again. And sure enough, they're a contractor for Eternalite. And they're wondering where you've been.

Congratulations. Now get back in your truck and get in line. Only six people in front of you...