A New Truckers App From TT: What Would You Like To See?

Keep in mind that "truck parking" might be a side street where trucks are OK, not part of a hotel property. This is the hard part.

As with Trucker Path, the opportunity to add user reviews, or observations about truck parking would help you round out local details.

Brett one thing I have noticied over the years is that hotels may say they have truck parking, but in reality they just permit trucks to park in the lot. I always call the hotel directly, and even then the clerk may give bad information. It has happened to me many times all over the country.

We really need to be careful on this one.

As with Trucker Path, the opportunity to add user reviews, or observations about truck parking would help you round out local details.

Yes, absolutely. I'll add user reviews and comments so people can report incorrect information or provide more clarity. That always drove me crazy about trucking companies and their directions to places. Most of the time the directions were wrong, but it took an Act of Congress to get them changed.

If you're going to collect information from users, you must have a way to verify or correct the information.

Brett one thing I have noticied over the years is that hotels may say they have truck parking, but in reality they just permit trucks to park in the lot. I always call the hotel directly, and even then the clerk may give bad information. It has happened to me many times all over the country.

We really need to be careful on this one.

Yeah, this kind of stuff will be tricky for sure. Beyond just hoping that people give us good information, we can use other sources like Google Satellite imagery, Google Street view, and Google Earth to help us determine what we're dealing with.

In regard to user reviews, one thing I found is that some reviews are intentionally incorrect to misguide the reader. Like a review might say:

Don't park here! The place is disgusting, and the cops will ticket you!

In reality, this dude may just be trying to ensure himself a place to park by scaring you away.

Reviews are tough. Because some people are...well...what they are.

Reviews are tough. Because some people are...well...what they are.

People are definitely something that can be hard to put into words.

There's a website called StackOverflow, which is for programmers. It's a forum where you can ask coding questions. It has an interesting self-moderating system where you earn points for your responses based on upvotes and downvotes from the community.

There are different levels you can reach, based on the points you've accrued, which determine what you can do. To make up numbers, 100 points means you can now report a user's comments as inappropriate. 500 points means you can upvote or downvote responses. 1000 points means you can delete inappropriate responses.

So, I could build a points-based system that allows people to earn points for their contributions and move up the ladder of trust.

I also love how effective our system is here in the forum, where no one can post comments without moderator approval until they've reached a certain number of comments, which is a number we don't make public. If a person proves to be a little untrustworthy, we can put them on a watch list before they can wreak any havoc. Even if someone trustworthy suddenly turns on us, we can put them on a watch list at any time where everything they say must be approved manually by moderators.

So, there needs to be a very robust system for reviewing anything that users contribute.

Has anyone mentioned casinos? Are all casinos truck parking friendly?

I have found parking at casinos several times when I was short on time, but I really don’t know which ones will be a good place to park. I mean I don’t want to assume I can park at a casino and then find out I can’t.

Has anyone mentioned casinos? Are all casinos truck parking friendly?

I would guess any that are worth going to would be trucker and RV friendly, but I don't know for sure.

Helping you guys find parking will be a high-priority goal for this app.

Turtle reminds us:

In regard to user reviews, one thing I found is that some reviews are intentionally incorrect to misguide the reader.

Unmoderated reviews are like this, yes, even in Trucker Path. But if you read many reviews about one location, you'll get a better idea. In other words, they will average out and the total will be closer to the truth.

(T. P. has a "report this review" option. This would help reflect the quality we expect in Trucking Truth.)

if you read many reviews about one location, you'll get a better idea. In other words, they will average out and the total will be closer to the truth.

This is true, and it's also truly annoying.

Take, for instance, Amazon product reviews. Unless there are about 1,000 or more reviews, you have no idea if any of it is legit or not. Anyone can fork over a little money to pay people to issue great reviews of a product, but even those paid reviews will be overrun by negative reviews if the product is poor and there are enough honest reviews. But that's the key - there has to be a ton of reviews to get a clear picture.

I'd love to avoid that mess and seek out a small number of high-quality reviews and comments instead of forcing people to muddle through 1,000 reviews that are maybe legit, maybe fake, and hope for the best. Maybe we can find a way to make that happen.