"Hey, Good Buddy, What's Your URL?"; PNV.com Launches On-Line Chat Forums to Connect Truckers

In yet another sign of these changing times, truckers across the nation are asking one another, "Hey, good buddy, what's your handle?", but they're not just asking for citizens' band radio sign-on names anymore.

Now, truckers with computer equipment in their rigs are leaving the asphalt highway for the information highway and jacking into the Internet at "home plates," or connections in truckstop parking lots.

And more truckers without PCs can plug into Internet terminals in many long-haul truckstops.

These are some e-services being offered by PNV.com, a Coral Springs, FL, provider of bundled communications services for the trucking industry. From chat rooms and bulletin boards to sending e-mail to family and colleagues, the company, along with a partner firm, says it's meeting truckers' needs in the Information Age.

Truckers can use "home plates," Internet connections in truckstop parking lots that look like the old hang-in-your-car-window drive-in movie speakers. They can plug in and then go to www.pnv.com. With the new service, PNV members can enter one of three public chat rooms—Life on the Road, Computers and Technology, and Fuel Prices.

Truckers can also create their own private chat rooms. The Chat-room service also features bulletin-board forums in which drivers can post and reply to messages. Initial postings cover a range of driver-initiated topics, including fuel prices, driver courtesy and life on the road.

PNV said that its members will soon be able to chat on-line with prominent trucking-industry figures and celebrities, the company said.

"Chat rooms on the Internet are the CB radios of the new millennium," Steven Yevoli, president of PNV.com, said. "Feedback from drivers tells us that this new feature will prove overwhelmingly popular, since chat rooms and bulletin boards help drivers meet and make friends while on the road as well as to stay informed."

In a partnership with CAIS Software of San Diego, PNV also plans to offer up to 500 Internet connections via kiosks at truckstops across the country for truckers who don't have computers of their own or in their trucks.

Brian McCaul, PNV marketing director, said that long-haul drivers can use the kiosks to plan cost-effective routes, buy products and services, and send e-mail to family and colleagues.

"With this service, truckers can go into a truckstop, for lunch or whatever, and use the Internet," he said.

The kiosks, 106 of which have been installed, include benches, spillproof keyboards and printers. They accept cash or credit cards. The service is free for sponsor-employed or related drivers, and 25 cents per minute for others, McCaul said.

PNV provides the kiosks to truckstop owners for free. The owners then receive a percentage of revenues the machines generate.