 Welcome to Road Gear Reviews. I'm Mark from RVLove and today we're talking about Ran McNally Road Atlases. Stay tuned. I actually have two here. I have the large print version, a 2015 version, and a 2017 version that's for the motor carriers. This is the truckers version and this is the Deluxe, which is the laminated pages. Both have their pros and cons. Let's talk about each of them individually. This Road Atlas is the Deluxe motor carriers version. This is really targeted at professional drivers, truckers, semi-drivers, because there's a lot of information in here about weight restrictions and licensing and the type of towing capacities that you can do in individual states. A lot of RVers also like this version because it has a section on height restrictions, weight restrictions, and a big section on mileage from city to city in the back. This Deluxe version has laminated pages, which makes it really durable and also it gives you the opportunity to highlight your route with a highlighter pen and then wipe it off after the fact. So a lot of people like those additional features. This Deluxe version with the laminated pages also has a tougher spiral bound. This is a very durable book. So if you're rough on your books and paperbacks, then this is be one to strongly consider and if you like the idea of highlighting your route, that's a great idea too. The downside of this book is it's 160 pages versus the 260 pages of the large print. It's about the same size, about 10 by 15, but with a hundred less pages, obviously the maps are going to be smaller than the other one. The large scale has 35% larger maps. One of the other reasons that the Deluxe version is appealing to people, as you can see all the orange highlights on here, these orange highlights are routes that are good for trucks. So if you have a large RV, it's beneficial to have the best routes already highlighted on the map. Randy McNally comes out with new versions of these every year. In fact, it's currently June of 2017 and I noticed the 2018 versions are already out. This particular version is the 2015 because we hit the road back in 2014 with this version. This is the large scale and the spiral bound. There's also a paperback version, but I would highly recommend the spiral version because it's really nice to be able to lay it completely flat. Paperback versions don't necessarily allow that capability. This is the large scale version, so you can see the map is much larger. This is eastern Colorado, this is eastern Colorado. So this is one page, this is two pages, and I like without, see without those orange lines, it feels less cluttered. It is easier to read some of the small print, not only because there's no orange lines, but of course because it's much larger print, which makes it easier for you to see the detail in the small cities in case you want to plan some diversions along the main route. So, Randy McNally makes three versions. They make a paperback version, a paper spiral back version, and a laminated spiral bound version. The paperback version is usually around 10 bucks, maybe 15. The spiral bound version is 15 to 20. I would highly recommend the spiral bound version over the paper back version, and then this laminated version is around 50 dollars. So in my opinion it's totally worth spending the extra to get the spiral bound. Whether or not it's worth it to go to the laminated version is going to be a personal choice. If you're really rough with your stuff, the laminated version is much more durable. If you like highlighting your routes, that's a big advantage for you as well. If you're a trucker or a large RVer, the motor carrier version does have those advantages of having some of the routes pre-highlighted that are better for big rigs. Also has the weight restrictions, the height restrictions, and a lot of additional mileage charts so you can calculate your distance to different cities. We started off with this large scale version and ended up two years later purchasing this motor carrier version on the recommendation of some other RVers. But personally, I still prefer this version because I like the larger print. When I'm sitting down with my maps and doing my route planning, I like to dig down to see the small cities, and I also don't like how on the motor carrier version some people really like that it highlights the big routes, but I think it makes it a lot more cluttered. So it's harder to see the city names and the street names that I would be easier to find on the paper version without those highlighted routes. It is nice to have the height and weight restrictions in the motor carrier version. It is nice to have the pre-highlighted routes that are great for big rigs, and it's nice to have a laminated version to highlight the route you want to take. So this, if those advantages are really important to you, definitely steer towards the Deluxe motor carrier version. If you want more details, maps, and you want to reduce the clutter of those highlighted routes, I would recommend the large scale version of the Road Atlas. So which do I prefer? Personally, I like the large scale version because I'd love that detail. They both have their advantages, but for the $30 jump from the large scale version to the Deluxe laminated version, it's not necessarily worth it to me, but it might be to use. So we'll of course put links to both versions in the description below. So some of you might be thinking, well I've got a GPS, why do I need an old-school paper version of a Road Atlas? Personally, I like to do my route planning well in advance. I like to sit it down at the table and have a big paper version and plan it out and have a good mental picture of the route that I'm going to take. Not only for that day, but the larger picture for the years because I like to see the big picture. And GPS is fail. We've had our GPS fail on us a couple times already, and when you're driving a big rig and the GPS takes you down the wrong road, that is not cool. When we do our route planning, we like using the paper road atlases. We also use an RV specific GPS and we double check it against the GPS on our phone. We also like using a reference that are called mountain directories that help us be aware of any steep grades on the route that we're planning. We'll do a separate review about those later on. One of the other things I love about an actual paper road atlas is I like to be able to look at the bigger picture and see what other routes might be enjoyable because when you choose a GPS, that's often just trying to get you the most direct route there. And the most direct route there might not be your best route there. This has been a review of Rand McNally Road atlases. I hope you found it helpful. If you have these atlases, we'd love to hear your comments about how you find them helpful. If you like this video, please be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe and check back every week for new videos from Road Gear Reviews. Until then, we'll see you on the road.