CB is alive and well in the trucking industry

[Lo/Dx Frontier]

I’ve made a few posts now. Been looking to get into radio but have read that CB is dead. Well I mainly want it for getting info when on the highway, as well as just general interest in listening to whatever is on it.

I took a trip on Monday that involved 10 hours of driving on the highways. I don’t have a radio yet but I started paying attention to the trucks on the roads to see if they were running antennas or not. I must have seen hundreds of trucks easily. A guess would be 300-400 or more. They were just seconds apart for the whole 10 hours. I started taking counts of 10 at a time to see how many had antennas, and it took less than 2 minutes to get to 10, sometimes less than 1 minute. The average was 8 out of 10 had CB antennas that were visible. Many of them were co-phased but I did see a fair number running just a single antenna.

Also I saw some running a much smaller antenna as well. It looked like a UHF antenna so I’m guessing GMRS or HAM? There were much fewer of those. I don’t think I saw more than 30 total, and in every case the truck also had long whips for CB to go with it.

I saw just 2 trucks that had a visible cell phone booster antenna.

Also noticed a few private passenger vehicles with antennas, but less than 10 in all.

Anyway, I satisfied myself that CB is far from dead on the highways which is where I mostly want to use it.

 

[L2]

Around here at the NY/NJ metro area I hear less and less drivers. Not hearing what I heard 10-15 years ago.

 

[AudioShockwav]

Both Interstate 5 and the 99 corridor running North/South have there share of CB traffic.
There are local groups that have regular nets during the week.
Friday nights at 8:00pm Pacific , 36 LSB the ditchbank net.
Saturday nights at 8pm Pacific on channel 11 AM, the Old Tube Radio network or OTR.
They stream live on YouTube , here is last Saturday


73
Jeff

 

[guitar_199]

Also noticed a few private passenger vehicles with antennas, but less than 10 in all.

THAT is the one that has really changed since "back in the day". Almost every other car on the road had an antenna.

 

[Eldorado828]

Around here at the NY/NJ metro area I hear less and less drivers. Not hearing what I heard 10-15 years ago.

Same down around the Tx,Nm,Az,Co,OK area. Around the cities you still hear some but on the highway nowhere near as many drivers as you said 10 to 15 years ago.

 

[fourstringburn]

Trucks may have factory antennas installed but these days many drivers don't have a radio much less turn it on if they do.

In what we referred to as the "communist states " which are ones that have discriminatory regs like 55 mph speed limits for trucks and even have sections of Federal interstates banned for trucks and other discriminatory laws, many trucks will run the radio to listen for " smokey bear" reports.

Of course when coming up on a traffic backups, the radio's light up then!

Other than that, I can go for days without hearing any activity except the skip shooting morons jamming up what used to be the highway channel. Because of that, I have to run up the squelch to rid that so I only get the close in stuff.

My radio is always on and in rare instances, I get a good highway alert or a little chit chat with another driver.

With more and more drivers being imported from India, Russia, former Slavic Republic countries, and now from Somolia and Ethiopia, the whole dynamic of the trucking industry is changing.

However, wIth each day so is the amount of accidents due to lack of time to assimilate to America from the immigrants country of origin, any real training, and many have fraudulent or CDL licenses obtain under false pretenses that many of these immigrant owned start up trucking companies have been caught and are still doing.

Soon there will be robotic trucks dominating the highways which are already operating in test phrases.

The days of the free spirited American truck driver who counted on his radio everyday are soon to pass forever.

8 more years and I hope to be out of it. It's been a long 38 years already.

Maybe sooner?

 

[whiteastro]

America in general has seemed to change. It's all about ME these days !!!

 

[144inBama]

Trucks may have factory antennas installed but these days many drivers don't have a radio much less turn it on if they do.

Yes sir, you've hit the nail on the head with this post. Many leave them off because of all the desert mud duck wannabes and childish jibber jabber constantly polluting 19.