The Best Apps for Truck Drivers

Index for Helpful Truck Driver Apps:

• All-Around Apps
• Directional Apps
• Apps for Fuel
• Weather Apps
• Health Apps
• Scanning Apps
• Other Helpful Apps

Your smartphone and its programs may have become some of the most essential tools in your truck. There are many free truck driver apps that will give you information on real-time weather, traffic, health, and more. You can become more efficient while keeping your focus on the drive. Forget hours of looking for the right software to keep you on the road. We’ve gathered some of the best apps to make driving more productive and fun.

WHY PHONE/TABLET-BASED PROGRAMS ARE USEFUL FOR TRUCKERS

Apps can give you the information you need when you need it. While you may have once carried a laptop to keep track of paperwork or still use a clipboard in your cab, smartphones and tablets enable you to do away with these options. Many drivers have replaced their laptops with smartphones or smaller tablets.

Before you hit the highway or during breaks, make your time online even more useful. Because road conditions can change on a moment’s notice, you need a way to track real-time events. Apps can also help you stay fit, eat healthily, and make friends on the road.

ALL AROUND TRUCK DRIVER APPS

The best all-around apps cover many of the regular tasks involved in your job as a truck driver. software solutions can reduce paperwork, help you create itineraries, find weigh stations, and more. Even better, these three apps are free, so you can try all three and keep the one you prefer.

TRUCKER TOOLS

Overdrive’s Trucker Tools is really a suite of mini-apps. Whether you want to plan out your route before hitting the road, find the nearest truck stop while in transit, or keep tabs on a delivery load’s route, Trucker Tools can help. Quickly find weigh stations and truck wash locations, get current local weather conditions, interact with fellow truckers on the message board, and more! The digital version of Overdrive’s magazine is also available, so you can keep up with the latest news from the road.

Available for both iOS and Android. Free 15-day trial period, then paid subscriptions available.

BIG ROAD

Create your daily driver logs, send vehicle inspection reports using the built-in document scanner, plan and calculate trip itineraries based on the Hours of Service rules you define — all at the touch of a button. You can even notify others in real time when you are on-duty, off-duty, or in transit. With Big Road, you’ll spend less time on paperwork and more time on the road.

Available for both iOS and Android. Free.

TRUCKLOGISTICS

Get a handle on your paperwork with the TruckLogics app. This program was made with independent owner-operators and fleet managers in mind. You can easily create and send reports with this app. Instead of keeping track of piles of receipts during your trips, scan them with your phone’s camera and submit them immediately. All records you send or download have a safe space in the cloud. With cloud storage, you can access the information from anywhere. Even if you lose your phone, you can still access your truck’s records, which makes this app an ideal solution for owner-operators looking to streamline their services .

Available for both iOS and Android. Free.

BEST TRUCK DRIVER APPS FOR DIRECTIONS

No matter how much you drive, chances are you’ll still need access to a road map. Even well-known areas can thwart you if traffic jams or construction block your planned routes. With direction programs, you can find the best way to get past these problems and keep your route on schedule.

WAZE

One free truck driver navigation app that’s available is call Waze. Waze puts the best aspects of social media to work for everyone sharing the roads. It’s a community-based navigation app that has active and passive use. Open the app and begin driving, and Waze begins to gather data on overall traffic conditions wherever you are. You can enter information about commonly-traveled routes, active traffic hazards, accidents, and traffic jams — alerting others to help them avoid the associated headaches. Meanwhile, Waze will inform you if it finds alternate routes around whatever is slowing traffic down. The app also can connect with Facebook to notify you of friends who are nearby or headed to the same destination, making meeting up on the road easy.

Available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phones. Free.

FUEL APPS FOR TRUCKERS

Even if you know where gas stations and truck stops are along your route, how can you be sure you’re getting the best fuel prices? Fuel apps regularly update to help you find the cheapest costs for fuel wherever you drive. Even after a natural disaster, you can still find fuel with these helpful programs.

FUELBOOK

Updated six times daily, Fuelbook is the app to turn to for the most up-to-the-minute fuel prices for over 7,000 truck stops across the U.S. and Canada. Since 2010, Fuelbook has helped drivers save nearly $3 billion in fuel costs! Real-time parking status and GPS check-in are available for each truck stop as well. The basic app is free, but with a monthly subscription, Fuelbook will assign a four-digit “Fuel Code” to your fleet, which in turn allows the app to search pricing based on your fleet’s Cost Plus, Retail Less and Better-Of discounts.

Available for both iOS and Android. Free.

GASBUDDY

The GasBuddy app pairs with the GasBuddy card to offer you ways to save on fuel. GasBuddy and accompanying card are free to sign up for, and you get a nickel per gallon when you buy fuel. Paid monthly memberships increase the savings at the pump. While this app is aimed at gasoline users and car drivers more than diesel-run trucks, the information can still help you find the lowest prices in your area. By tracking trends in the fuel prices, you can also see if regional rates are increasing or decreasing.

The GasBuddy software also makes it simple to find places with power and fuel after a natural disaster, because you never know where you may be when an earthquake, tornado, hurricane, or forest fire occurs.

Available for both iOS and Android. Free.

TRUCKER WEATHER APPS

Weather is one of the most unexpected aspects of driving. You could drive through heat and snow on the same day. Keeping up with the weather with an app makes it easy to have customized forecasts tailored to your specific location. The information will continue to update as you drive, giving you the most accurate weather data possible.

THE WEATHER CHANNEL

While not explicitly designed for the trucking industry, many truckers rely heavily on a good weather forecasting app, so they aren’t caught off-guard by weather conditions at their destination — or worse, find themselves amid horrendous, unsafe driving weather mid-trip. With the Weather Channel, you can quickly see accurate weather forecasts on an hour-by-hour basis for multiple locations, allowing you to plan your route and prepare. Emergency weather and pollen alerts, flood advisories, and other inclement weather announcements are pushed in real-time based on either actual or selected location.

Available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phones. Free.

DARK SKY

Dark Sky takes local weather and forecasting to the next level. You get access to high-quality maps that show the location of precipitation in the area. With notifications turned on, you can get the most recent alerts to nearby severe weather. Forecasts in the free edition give you hourly weather, but you get the minute-by-minute forecast with the premium version. The premium version also gives you the option to have your local temperature on the status bar and connectivity to your smartwatch.

Available for $3.99 on iOS and $2.99 on Android.

PHYSICAL HEALTH APPS

Driving long distances can take a toll on your mental and physical health. Truck stops are not known for having the healthiest food available, and the open road can become lonely. These solutions help you to fight these common conditions and more by helping you to stay in touch with others and improve your fitness and nutrition.

MYFITNESSPAL

With a MyFitnessPal account, you can track your calories to keep yourself on course with your diet. Calorie counting is as easy as scanning barcodes from your food labels. Keep up a food diary to ensure you maintain adequate nutrition on the road. The program allows you to count both calories and nutrients, giving you a clear picture of the healthfulness of your diet.

In addition to nutrition, MyFitnessPal makes exercise monitoring easier. You can connect this app to the information from your Apple HealthKit, Fitbit, Garmin, or other fitness trackers.

Available for both iOS and Android. Free.

TRUCK SCANNER PROGRAM APPS

Make organizing documents, receipts, and business cards easier with scanning apps. You don’t need a computer and a separate scanner. These programs use your phone’s camera to quickly capture a high-quality image of the paper document, so you can file or submit it as needed.

TRANSFLO MOBILE+

Over 1 million downloads of the driver app from Transflo attest to this program’s popularity. With this app, you can scan documents, track payroll, breeze quickly through weigh stations, see driver vehicle inspection reports, look up GPS for the fleet, and much more. The integration with other programs makes Transflo stand out. It links with electronic logging devices, business software, myPilot, CAT Scale, and Drivewyze. This software makes the paperwork side of trucking easier.

Available for both iOS and Android. Free.

CAMSCANNER

Though not specifically for truck drivers, CamScanner is an easy-to-use app for quickly creating digital copies of your receipts, bills, shipping records, and any other paper documents you have. While the basic app is free, paid versions — for both iOS and Android, the premium account is $4.99/month or $49.99/year — give you more options with the files you create from your scans. A business account subscription option is also available.

One of the best features of this app comes in all three versions, including the free one. You can use optical character recognition (OCR) on the scanned document, making it simple to search for a specific word or phrase. If you have a long trip with multiple items scanned, this feature could save you a lot of time when you need to organize things on your computer.

For fleet managers, the business account allows you to have all your truck drivers scan and send their documents directly to a shared folder, so nothing gets lost. You will also have access to documents in the drivers’ individual folders to quickly access documents they’ve saved.

Available for both iOS and Android. Free — with paid options available.

OTHER USEFUL TRUCKER APPS

Apps can do a lot more than track the weather or traffic. Weighing can take up a lot of time out of your schedule. Some apps make this process faster or give you the power to create a customized travel journal for the best places to stop, park, or find gas.

WEIGH MY TRUCK

Save 20 minutes or more every time you pass a weigh station by downloading the Weigh My Truck app. The CAT scale app saves time and sends electronic versions of your truck’s ticket to your email. The app itself costs nothing, and you don’t have to pay extra for the service. You will still have the weighing fees of $11.50 for the first time and $2.00 for a reweigh. Also, you must register when you download it to connect it to a fleet account or another payment account.

Available for both iOS and Android. Free.

TRUCKER NOTES

If you’ve ever been driving down the highway and spotted a place you wanted to remember, you may have made a mental note but forgot about the location when you found a pen to write down the information. Trucker Notes solves this problem by creating a customized map of the places you want to remember. This app lets you save all your secrets of the road. Do you have preferred parking spots? What about those truck stops with delicious coffee and hot showers? Such personalized information is not available from more traditional mapping programs that only offer directions. Download this unique, free app for either Android or Apple phones.

Available for both iOS and Android. Free.

SKYPE

If you use your smartphone to stay connected with family and friends, you’ll appreciate the savings and connectivity you can get from Skype. This software solves problems of not seeing your loved ones by allowing video calls, voice-only calls, and texting from anywhere. You can even have multiple people on the same call to connect with everyone at once. If you and your family members all have Skype, you’ll cut down on your phone bills thanks to Skype’s free calls between users. You can also call someone without this app by using Skype’s paid calling service.

For Android, the app is free. The app is also free for iOS — but in-app purchases are available.

Available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phones. Free.

PODCAST ADDICT

Having several trusty trucker-specific apps on hand can help you skip traffic, stay in shape, and process paperwork faster. But to pass the time and stay up-to-date on things that interest you most, give Podcast Addict a try.

You can search by category, what’s popular, and discover new podcast recommendations based on what you subscribe to.

Available for Android. Free.

AUDIBLE

Looking for a way to listen to your favorite authors or discover new ones? Audible, Amazon’s audiobook platform, likely has what you’re looking for! It’s easy to search the store as well as your existing library. Plus, membership gives you two original Audible titles and one additional title per month. You can test it out first with their 30-day trial. In-app purchases are available, and the platform allows you to download titles so you can listen to them offline.

Available for both iOS and Android. Membership is $14.95 per month.

FLEETSAFER

When you’re on the road, you want to be smart about your smartphone use. Distracted driving, especially when you are responsible for a large shipment, your personal safety, and the safety of those around you on the road, is something you simply can’t afford. There are two options of the app available for businesses to offer their fleet: hardware-assisted in the vehicle and a software-only option. Your employer may have an app like this to help you abide by their driving policies while on the road — and pricing will likely vary based on the package they’ve signed on for.

Available for both iOS and Android. Price varies.

Make Your Smartphone Work for You

Having a good suite of apps is as valuable as any other tool you take on the road. While other apps cover the same ground as the ones we’ve chosen as being among the best here, we think these will make your next run as safe, productive, and enjoyable as any you’ve had.

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updated: 6/4/2020