Mobile apps are a tremendous resource for truckers. They provide massive amounts of information that we've never had access to before the advent of the internet and mobile technology. Here are a few screen shots from a trip that I took from North Carolina to Las Vegas a few months ago and how mobile apps helped me to make good operational decisions during an unexpected weather event.
As I was traveling west across Arizona toward Flagstaff, I started to encounter eastbound trucks that were covered in snow. I knew of the chance of snow in Flagstaff, but not of a storm. I pulled over for my break about 90 miles east of Flagstaff in the desert and opened up my iPad to see what was going on ahead. I used the "MyRadar" app to see the below image. If you look closely, you can see the blue dot to the east of Flagstaff - that's me, safely away from the storm.
The below image is from my Google Maps app. I could see the red lines of traffic to the south and west of Flagstaff. This information is gathered from smart phone users who are stuck in that traffic and represent major problems on the interstate. I knew from this image that it was no need in me proceeding. I would only get caught up in that mess and greatly increase my chances in getting into a crash.
I opened up my Waze app, which is a crowd sourced traffic app and checked out the east side of Flagstaff where there weren't as many problems according to Google Maps. I was able to focus in and find the average speed on Interstate 40 was 34 mph. That let me know that it was still slow-going and road conditions were still very challenging.
I found the below image on Twitter. I searched using the hashtag (#) of "Flagstaff" to find tweets about Flagstaff and the current snow storm. One of the results was a still shot from a traffic cam perched high above Interstate 40 that let me actually see the road ahead. I could see that road was snow covered and traffic was light. Since I had extra travel time built into my load, I decided to wait until the roads improved.
Later on Twitter, I again searched the hashtag "Flagstaff" and found the picture below of someone tweeting from their car in traffic. They said that the roads were good and now everyone was hitting the roads again which created a traffic jam!
As I proceeded up and over Flagstaff on dry roads, I saw the carnage from the night before as countless cars and trucks lined the ditches and treelines. I wonder if their loads were so important that they had to go during the storm that dumped 16" of snow. Now, their loads were damaged and wouldn't be making it to their destinations.