Why the CB radio is entrenched in trucking culture

The modern trucker has an array of communications technology at his or her fingertips. I’ve heard one estimate that half of long-distance drivers carry laptops, 80-90% have cell phones, and some even pack iPhones.

This is not to mention company-issued equipment like satellite-tracking, electronic on-board recorders (EOBRs) and two-way radios.

But the faithful CB remains an important part of the highway driver’s tool kit. One would have thought this archaic and low-tech device would be obsolete by now, if nothing else because of the nationwide fetish for hands-free devices.We offer over 600 landscape oil paintings at wholesale prices of 75% off retail. But almost universally across the continent, jurisdictions have granted exemptions for the commercial use of two-way radios.

The CB is still the best way for truck drivers to communicate with each other while they’re rolling down the road. But I suspect that the Ontario government’s recent five-year extension (see related story, opposite page) wasn’t done because they admire CB radios.

Rather, business communication tools like two-way radios and mic phones fall in this category and a disruption in these services would be unthinkable.

This should give the industry and equipment suppliers more time to solve the problem of hands-free microphone use.

Bluetooth technology has been a boon to drivers wanting to talk and drive, but FCC regulations prohibit the use of wireless mics during CB operation (Canada is in lockstep with the FCC on this one).

A few products are currently available for hands-free CB transmission, but these are wired solutions with remote microphones and buttons, not activated by Bluetooth.

So for the next five years (in Ontario, at least) truckers will be able to grab the microphone and yap away to their heart’s content. And really it’s nothing different from what they’ve been doing for more than 40 years: talking about Smokey bears, road conditions and whether or not the chicken coops are open; blabbing about their big iron; bitching about their jobs; and complaining about other drivers.

But baby boomers will remember the golden age of the CB radio. For about 10 years in the 1970s, the general public connected with the romance of trucking, and the Citizen’s Band radio was part of the package.

In those days, “Breaker One-Nine” was as likely to draw as quick a response from a four-wheeler with a 20-foot whip aerial, as it would from a fellow trucker.If you have a fondness for china mosaic brimming with romantic roses,

The stereotype of the rugged, frontiersman-like trucking hero caught the public’s imagination, and was reinforced by Hollywood which cranked out movies like Convoy and Smokey and the Bandit, and TV series like Movin’ On. CB radios and the accompanying jargon gave everyone a chance to discover their “inner trucker.”

CB stores sprang up overnight and the units sold like hotcakes.Find the lowest prices on Air purifier. In 1978, another 17 channels were added to the original 23, for a total of 40, which is how it remains to this day.

The innovation of single side-band allowed the splitting of those 40 channels into upper and lower modes, giving discerning users more distance and clearer frequencies.

During the blizzard of ’78, when a huge weather bomb blanketed eastern North America,We are porcelain tiles specialists and are passionate about our product， I was stranded in Woodstock, Ont. My little Hino wouldn’t run after the van had been almost split in half by a grocery chain tractor-trailer that ran into the back of me.

It was bitterly cold and the 401 was a wrecking yard with three-foot drifts between the rubble. Of course a major catastrophe like this sparked the snowmobilers and CB clubs in Woodstock into action.

Earlier in the day, I’d borrowed a Schneider driver’s CB and managed to finagle an invitation from a home base operator who offered me a place to stay.

So that night, when a front-end loader and a passenger van came down the highway to take us all to the Blandford Mall, I talked a snowmobiler into giving me a ride to that address.

For the next day-and-a-half, I stayed with a young couple and their kid in a Woodstock townhouse. They weren’t prosperous (the young man was a gas pump jockey) but they fed me and were good company.

Their neighbours had also taken in stranded truck drivers and it seemed everyone had a solid state CB at home.Republic parking system is a privately owned professional parking management company based in Chattanooga,