A national plan such as AT&T’s family plan could be the way to go if you want to stay in touch easier with family and friends. The second cell phone in the plan could be left with a wife, other family member or a friend.
Bottom line is double check any free roaming claims by any cell phone company to see if this hidden fee will bite you hard on the first phone bill when you discover this unadvertised trick of theirs.
Check to see if a data plan is included with the monthly package plan in the event you use the cell phone or one of their access cards to access the internet. Many companies charge extra or require you to sign up for a data plan to transmit data such as email, faxes and files.
Remember, once you sign the contact you will be stuck.
•What are your communication habits? Free weekend minutes and a 5000 minute allowance at night are great but what are your communication needs during the week day?
Are you an independent trucker who will be using the cell phone frequently during the day trying to find loads, getting directions, using email and faxing contracts?
Maybe you’re a company driver who was not given a company cell phone but find yourself always using your own personal cell phone to find a location.
Maybe you’re calling back home during the work day more than you anticipated.
Think hard about the minutes that you may use for each work day in the month.
Selecting too small of a weekday minutes package will cost you dearly because of the higher rate per minute they charge after going over your monthly weekday allotment.
It’s almost like you are penalized severely for not choosing the right minute package once you discover the next level minute package would have been cheaper in the first place.
Better yet, try to customize your plan to allow you to make a decision around mid month to give back any excess unused minutes that you don’t think will be needed to get through the month. Some plans will allow you to go on line to adjust your minutes needed.
Do ask for this option because it could mean keeping $75 to
$100 a month in your pocket instead of their pocket by monitoring your minute usage.
If you don’t want to monitor your minutes that close, choose a plan that will allow the unused minutes of a higher monthly minute package to roll over to the next month.
•If you are a trucker who travels regionally, you may save money by going with a regional cellular carrier who resells minutes bought at a discount rate from the large cell phone carriers. Listed below are several to check to see if they can fit your strategy to have good trucker mobile phone plans that save you money.
Virgin Mobile
Secure Consumer Cellular
Earth Tones Cellular
•Decide if you should purchase a locked cell phone versus an unlocked cell phone. A locked cell phone may be cheaper to purchase because the carrier subsidizes the cost of the cell phone. However, use is limited only to that specific cellular carrier to keep you as their customer.
An unlocked cell phone can be used with another cellular carrier simply by replacing the sim card located inside the cell phone. Verify with the manufacturer before purchasing the cell phone to make sure it can be used by different cellular carriers.
Best Type of Cell Phone for the Coast to Coast and Rural Trucker:
At the minimum, a dual-mode handset which utilizes both the digital and analog systems currently being used in the United States should be used to give you a wider area of coverage to use your cell phone to talk.
While the digital system provides a better quality of service; the analog system provides a wider area of coverage especially in the rural areas of the United States. Some rural areas only receive the signal from the analog system.
If it is time for you to purchase a new cell phone, serious consideration should be given to buying a Tri-Mode cell phone to utilize both digital band signals and the one analog band serving the United States.
Many of the internet services such as email, internet browsing and file transfers require the newest digital signal band.
With new technologies evolving rapidly with Tri-mode handsets now available to allow easier wireless internet access, you’ll have to make the personal decision to spend the extra money to have access to the additional digital network.
Confer with the cell phone manufacturer of your choice because you may decide to utilize your cell phone as the connector to link your computer with wireless capabilities to conduct business without leaving the comforts of your truck.
Get Paid Quicker For Delivered Shipments - Use Scanner and Fax/Email
To help speed up getting paid quicker for delivered shipments, fax and receive BOL documents via fax/email services while sitting comfortably in your truck by linking your computer with a cellular, Wifi or satellite internet connection service to gain internet access.
So how do you handle the hard copy of the Bill of Lading paperwork or any other hard copies of paperwork?
Link your computer to the compact Pentax DSmobile 600 Scanner and Pentax PocketJet 3 Plus 300-DPI Mobile Printer with Integrated USB/IrDA to print and resend signed documents straight from your truck at a cost in the long run definitely cheaper than the average of $1.00 to $2.00 or more per sheet typically charged for faxing documents at truck stops.
Plus, the time lost standing in line at the truck stop puts your competition hundreds of miles and promises of earlier delivery's times ahead of you while you wait for your turn to fax the BOL documents to get paid.
The use of linking the computer, scanner, printer and fax / email service to increase your productivity to make more money is a very important reason to seriously think hard about how many air time minutes you may need for the month.
Trying to decide how many minutes are needed in a monthly plan to get the job done without having to pay a penalty for the extra minutes used is hard to do.
One strategy plan to consider to help control air time expenses:
1. Go with a plan that allows you to easily change your monthly minute allowance from month to month preferably at mid-month. Try to also negotiate the per minute penalty charge for going over the minutes alloted in your monthly plan.
2. You also want a plan that allows unused minute rollover each month.
3. This way you can start your account with a higher monthly minute plan than needed to avoid paying the high penalty per minute charge. Then scale down the monthly minute plan as needed.
 Evaluate actual air time minutes used to conduct business for several months.
You will be able to better judge the monthly minute allowance needed for your operation.
Start faxing your BOL papers today.
Who Has the Best Cell Phone Service?
Actually that is a tough question.
Local service is usually good for the large cellular companies. The strongest customer dissatisfaction with major cell phone carriers is the service disruptions when traveling cross country.
A review of forums on the internet show many people rate Cingula/AT&T as the best when traveling cross country yet some people swear Verizon is the best.
From personal experience, we rate the top three as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint/Nextel respectively.
Why rate Cingular/AT&T as Number One?
Having the use of all three cell phone services in the last three years, here is what happened?
1.Sprint/Nextel service stopped three miles outside a major city away from an interstate. Their service stopped 45 miles outside a major city along an interstate corridor.
2.With my company phone using Verizon as the service provider and my personal cell phone using Cingular/AT&T as the service provider; I had both phones sitting side by side in my boat in the middle of the lake. The Cingular/AT&T phone worked and the Verizon phone could not "hear me".
3.While all cell phones lose their signal at times, we’ve had more success in rural areas and on top of mountains with Cingular/AT&T.
Big Rig Central.com hopes you see the value in creating your own trucker mobile phone plans.
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