Hi Don
Seems like we are about 1 year apart on the GPS as last year I was searching this out too. I’ll give you my experience and how I now use mine after a learning curve.
First is understanding what a GPS when towing can do and cannot do. A few years ago I had a rent a car in Germany. And in Europe many of the cars had the GPS built right in the car. The turn by turn display was right in the dash between the tach and the speedometer. You put in an address and it would take you most times right to the front door. It was very good. The US aito are now catching up to this integrated system. That was my only prior experience to GPS driving.
However some things I learned towing. Using a GPS for towing is not like when you are in a car, especially with my big camper…. The TV and TT cannot go where a car can easily. So after much debate and review I did get the Garmin Nuvi 465T trucker GPS. It has some features that help however part of this is still expecting what a GPs can and can’t do.
The good:
- I can program in the truck and trailer weight, height and length. It warns me on overpasses. At least ones that are in it’s data base….
- I can get steep hill approach cautions.
- I have turn by turn navigation.
- It has lifetime traffic that I have yet to use.
- It has both truck route and car routing. I can flip as needed.
- When in truck mode I know a semi can go down the route it is taking me, most times.
- It has lane assist so it tells me in advance when the exit is coming up and on the left or right.
- It has a down loadable feature that I can create custom maps and download to the device and then just follow the route.
- It has a blue tooth phone built in.
- A large screen to help see it.
- It auto recalculates quickly when I want to go straight and it wants me to turn….
The realization:
Number 1 topic. Do not think you can trust this thing and it will be your only source of navigation. I still use hard maps and now with the birds eye view and aerial views I go to Bing.com maps and see my route the entire way. Then I know where this thing is sending me into and can I get back out.
The download feature of a route works very well off the Garmin Map Source free software however I still have not figured out all of that software. It is not intuitive and you cannot yet drag the route to change it like Bing and Google. The Bing download didn’t work and now I see Micro soft pulled that option off there site. I have not tried Google or Mapquest to down load yet.
A GPS works very well if you have an address. However many of the campground entrances we go to do not have an exact street address. To combat this I took some tips from my good buddy PTHutch. I use on line software that has a bird eye view and gives long and lat coordinates. I pick a spot in the campground parking lot. Not a point in the middle of the road. That way it will turn me right into camp.
I use the coordinates as a custom POI (point of interest) down load it and then head to it. Or I enter the coordinates directly into the GPS and hit go.
I use this web site to get the coordinates. It has a aerial view too so I can see the campground and make sure the coordinates are where I want to end up. Just move the mouse to the exact spot and write them down.
Find Latitude and Longitude
Other GPS realizations:
The GPS does not always tell the route number you want to turn on they say a street name. The road signs have the route number way in advance and the street sign can be missing…. I wish it could give both.
The GPS can drive you nuts on certain routes where the route number you are driving on merges with other routes. Like a combo of say Route 2 and Route 34. In the hard maps world you know you want to just stay on Rt 2 for 3 hours but the GPS creates steps for every shift in the road names. You sweat a few bullets as it has you taking a turn off but really it is just following the Rt 2… Again realizing how the thing chops up every single road change. This only happens when you have a road that has 2 or 3 routes all using the same strip of road for a while until they split up again.
I wish it had an actual RV mode. It calculates routes if you set it for fastest or shortest distance. This may only mean 1 minute difference in time but it can send you down an ally that you know you do not want to go down. Most times when you go down a block and take the great big turn road with lots of clearance but it is 1 minute longer.
All in all now that I understand how the thing works, it is an aide. I do not have to watch for the turn so hard as it will tell me about 0.5 miles before hand then start worrying… The lane assist to warn left hand exists or right exists is handy. The feature of creating custom route is handy just I have to master Garmim Map Source software or they get Bing to work right...
Being able to find gas stations on the fly is handy as well as items of interest in the area. When we get to camp we search out all the stuff in the area by Garmin and then go on a day trip.
A tip from HenryJ that I did was to get a Friction mount. Looks like this. It sits on the dash, holds well, Cindy can grab it and fiddle with the GPS and put it back. When we leave the truck I put the whole thing under the seat so it is out of site and out of mind.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51d0oEfsLaL._AA300_.jpg
Amazon.com: Garmin Portable Friction Mount: Electronics: Reviews, Prices & more
The term efficiency preceded by frustration fits when you are talking about towing with a GPS. Once you understand what it can do well and what it cannot plus the new GPS lingo you have to figure out, you feel better about buying it…. We used ours on our last 1,600 mile camping trip and it worked good, once I figured out to go to coordinates… Thanks Hutch!!!!
Hope this helps
John
.......after two miles..turn around....ok, now we're west on US30.....here comes PA283, my "GPS" reminds me "it's a left exit, it's a LEFT EXIT, IT'S A LEFT"....watch Mr. GPS make a three lane move across traffic to the left!!! 
