I'm gonna GPS myself today.

**Goldenboy** · November 19th, 2010, 07:05 AM

Did you ever wonder how much we walk in a day. If you mark a 1000' long stretch of road with 5 utilities on it you will walk a minimum of 10,000' or 2 miles. After many talks with other locators guessing about how far we walk each day I'm finally going to check it out.

I am bringing my Garmin Etrex Legend Hcx into work and will wear it all day. I will turn it on on my first locate and reset my tripmeter on the GPS and on my truck. I will log in every job with the amount I walk and at the end of the day I can recheck by subtracting the miles I drove in my truck from the total miles on the handheld GPS.

I have a very average winter day today(8 hour day). I have a long survey a handful of sprayups and some regular tickets in the city and town.

**Bad Robot** · November 19th, 2010, 09:12 PM

Cool idea, very interested as this sounds like an average winter day for me as well.

**Goldenboy** · November 20th, 2010, 08:06 AM

This was 6.67 mile day. This was what I consider a nobrainer day. Quite a few spray ups and clear tickets and a few emergencies.

It was real easy to keep track of and I think I will do it in the summer a few times. I actually wish I would have done it on Thursday when I spent 5 hours on a 2500ft project with 7 trenches. I walked a ton that day.

**TheCableVine** · November 20th, 2010, 11:47 AM

I like experiments like that. My problem is that I would forget to keep track of everything.

I seriously doubt I walk more than a mile a day. To many small jobs and absolutely no projects are going on.

**Goldenboy** · November 20th, 2010, 01:19 PM

I was actually quite amazed at at a fence job I did. It was a lot in the city with 3 lines on the back lot line and 4 sets of services coming out. It was a .35 mile walk for the job. There was a little extra back and forth because of bad toning cables but I didn't figure you could walk 1/3 of a mile on a little city lot.

**ProfessionalLocator** · November 20th, 2010, 01:58 PM

Originally Posted by Goldenboy

I was actually quite amazed at at a fence job I did. It was a lot in the city with 3 lines on the back lot line and 4 sets of services coming out. It was a .35 mile walk for the job. There was a little extra back and forth because of bad toning cables but I didn't figure you could walk 1/3 of a mile on a little city lot.

I remember so many employment ads placed for locators saying job requirement was to walk 2 to 3 miles several days a week. I always wore out too many boots for that to be so.

**ProfessionalLocator** · November 20th, 2010, 02:05 PM

You realize that the management of USIC and Utiliquest read these forums.

Now they are going to try and make sure their locators get out of the truck at every job by shoving a gps tracker up their butts.

I can ehra it now; "the gps showed you walk an average of 2.5 mph when your are marking, you have to walk an average of 3.4 mph if you want to keep your job. Here's your pay cut until you can walk faster."

**ProfessionalLocator** · November 20th, 2010, 02:07 PM

Originally Posted by ProfessionalLocator

You realize that the management of USIC and Utiliquest read these forums.

Now they are going to try and make sure their locators get out of the truck at every job by shoving a gps tracker up their butts.

I can ehra it now; "the gps showed you walk an average of 2.5 mph when your are marking, you have to walk an average of 3.4 mph if you want to keep your job. Here's your pay cut until you can walk faster."

Oh yes, for those of you who think I am just joking Utiliquest has already started the process to implement this with the gps trackers on their paint sticks.

**TheCableVine** · November 20th, 2010, 03:57 PM

You made me laugh, then I realized you are probably right. Now I'm laughing cause you are probably right.

**TheCableVine** · November 20th, 2010, 04:19 PM

I was in a bike shop yesterday and was looking at their bike computers. They are GPS enabled. They will track your speed and distance and all that. All you need to do is download the information into a google program that will show a map of your ride. Kinda cool.

**sprayandpray** · November 21st, 2010, 07:50 AM

Originally Posted by ProfessionalLocator

Oh yes, for those of you who think I am just joking Utiliquest has already started the process to implement this with the gps trackers on their paint sticks.

Utiliquest canceled those plans here in Texas and did away with e-sketch. Something to do with too many late tickets and a customer attitude of "Just mark and protect our utilities in a timely manner like we hired you for!"

**ProfessionalLocator** · November 21st, 2010, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by TheCableVine

I was in a bike shop yesterday and was looking at their bike computers. They are GPS enabled. They will track your speed and distance and all that. All you need to do is download the information into a google program that will show a map of your ride. Kinda cool.

Go to any website that sells to private investigators and you will find a large selection. They are battery powered with magnetic mounts for attaching to vehicles. They are motion sensitive so they shut down to conserve battery power once the vehicle is parked. You recover them from the vehicle and then download the stored data. They can also be set to record their location every few seconds or minutes depending how much detail you are willing to trade for battery life. It was considered illegal to put this on a car where you did not have permission of at least one person on the car's title. There is a court case where the judge ruled the police use of such a device without a search warrant was legal. That since the device was attached to the exterior of the vehicle, even though out of sight, the driver had no reasonable exception of privacy. I expect that this decision will be overturned in the appeals court.