The Source for Trucking News, Opinions and Trucking Jobs | Wifi at Truck Stops

WIFI hotspots at truck stops are really starting to catch on. Flying J is up to 238 locations Flying J’s (Tonservices) tech support is actually pretty good. They sound like they actually know what they are talking about and will take the time to work with you to set up your computer or if you’re having problems connecting.

Then there’s new truckstop.net with supposedly 500 spots with 3000 on the way. I’ve come across more than one location that didn’t work at all. I haven’t called their tech support yet so I don’t have any experience with them. They are more expensive than Flying J’. I’ve only bought a day pass when it was convienent and there wasn’t a Flying J around.

Travel Center of America truck stops are rolling out their own Wifi. There are some TA’s that have the Flying J service and some with the Truckstop.net service. And now they’re going to have their own? Are they going to take out the other competing services?

Pilot truck stops just announced their own rollout.

Truckers with laptops have gone from having to drag our laptops into the truck stops and tearing the phone off the wall to use a dial up line. Park-n-View was an idea that failed and now we don’t even have to leave our truck and we get a high speed connection. Technology is so sweet. Our problem now is trying to decide which service to subscribe to without having to subscribe to all of them or getting daily passes which are more expensive in the long run. My Flying J yearly subscription runs out in July and I will have to decide either to renew or start with someone else. Since I can’t get fuel at Flying J’s (since they don’t have Comdata), and I get a fleet discount on fuel at TA’s, I’m hoping TA rolls their systems out fairly quick.

I bought the wireless card that Flying J sells. I don’t have the external antennae, though sometimes I wish I did. Usually when I’m in a corner that the antennae isn’t exactly pointing to. Most of the time I have a pretty good connection anywhere in the parking lot. If nothing else I can drag my laptop inside and have a great connection. It works pretty well and was easy to install. Once you get a wireless card, it will work anywhere there’s a Wifi hotspot. The cards are NOT system specific.

If you have any questions about Wifi and getting connected, this guide is excellent. It’s written for laymen and answers most questions about Wifi. Including buying the right hardware, configuring your computer, protecting yourself online and how to send email on a Wifi network that’s not your regular ISP. And much more information about connecting to Wifi. If your new to this cool way to connect to the internet, this guide will really help a lot. It’s one of the 10 QuickStep Guides and is really well done as are all the guides. They are all worth checking out. The link is also on the right hand side of the website under Links I like.