Track that Truck! There’s an App for That
By Minna A in Food on Mar 11, 2011 5:00PM
Tracking down food trucks can be cumbersome; you have to know what trucks are out there and follow all of their twitter accounts. If you miss the truck you want, you have to start the whole search process over again. Well guess what, Chicago, you no longer need to do the Twitter/Facebook hunt—there’s an app for that. TruxMap, founded in L.A., offers a free, centralized way to “track all food trucks in the city in real-time, using our Web interface, Twitter feeds and iPhone GPS coordinates,” says co-creator and lead developer Ivan Pardo. Still in its initial phases, the app is in the process of collecting data to provide accurate updates on location stops and times.
Here at Chicagoist, we’re always excited to embrace new tools that make our food-hunting lives easier, and so we reached out to TruxMap to inquire about the development of the Chicago version of the APP. Thanks to our humble request, overnight the app expanded to include coordinates for trucks in operation around the city today.
Pardo explains that they've "learned a lot about how to make our maps as flexible and all-compassing as possible without sacrificing accuracy. The strategy we've developed requires at minimum a Twitter account" but users can choose to expand usage. TruxMap not only links food vendors twitter accounts to the app, but also allows food trucks to log in GPS coordinates of their stops in addition to their service times and plan ahead with a serving schedule set as far in advance as they'd like.
In addition to a comprehensive listing of all the food trucks on the roads, the app has the added ability to request a stop near you. The “Come to Me” feature was initially launched with the L.A. TruxMap site after requests from food truck owners. The option to request a food truck to "Come to Me" shows food truck operators where demand is highest around the city.
The app is available for iPhones and Android phones, but TruxMap has a website and mobile website available as well. For Chicagoans headed to Austin for SXSW, you can access the list of nearly 100 food trucks that will be operating in the Austin area. TruxMap can also satisfy your food truck fancies while traveling, since the app tracks food trucks in Atlanta, Washington D.C., New York City, Boston, Austin, Miami, Las Vegas, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco.