Thanks for the reminder, India. As they say on that disaster preparedness radio commercial, "It's never too late until it is."
I do full backups at home where the hard drive backup is. Between trips home, we use two flash drives (drives about the size of your thumb that plug into your computer, sometimes called thumb drives). One flash drive is kept in the truck, the other at home with the person who takes care of our mail.
I backup the important files onto the flash drive and carry it with me every time both of us are out of the truck at the same time (truck unattended). If the truck is stolen, burned, burglarized or whatever while we are away and the computer is lost or destroyed, we can buy another computer, install new software, plug in the flash drive and be back in business that quick. (Replacing the truck would take longer, of course.)
"Important files" is a relative term. What may be important to one person is unimportant to another. A flash drive can hold a lot of files, including photos, spreadsheets, etc. A large amount of data can be backed up onto a flash drive easier than it can be uploaded to an online file storage service. It is less expensive too once you buy the flash drives.
Every so often, by mail or when one of us is home, I swap the flash drive in the truck for the one at home. We have a truck fire drill set up which includes grabbing the flash drive, wallets, etc. on our way out a burning or wrecked truck, if there is time.
If we do not get the flash drive out and the computer is also destroyed, we can have the flash drive at home sent to us and be back in business as soon as we buy a new computer to plug it into. The files on the flash drive from home will not be up to the minute, but we will have most of what we need.
To lose all our data, the following would have to happen all at once: our computer in the truck would have to be lost or destroyed, the flash drive we carry in the truck or on our person would have to be lost or destroyed, the flash drive at home would have to be lost or destroyed and the backup hard drive at home would have to be lost or destroyed.
When we are home with the truck, the truck is parked far enough from the house such that if either one burns, the other is unlikely to be affected.
Some of this may sound paranoid or over the top to some readers. That's OK. Living through a house fire at a young age has a way of conditioning you.
The accident Glen and Janice Rice had also brought home the truth that any expediter on the road can have it all destroyed in an instant.
For those who do not know, while driving down the Florida Turnpike in their CR-unit, Glen and Janice were struck by a car that crossed the median at high speed. Their truck immediately started on fire. They got out with the clothes on their back and nothing else. Glen's shoes were on fire as he got Jan out of the truck and they both fled.
Everything in the truck was lost including their cell phones, credit and debit cards, cash, IDs, computers, clothes, jewelry, toiletry bags, everything. After receiving a ride home, it was a challenge to get to their money because they had no IDs to show the bank when they wanted to make a withdrawal.
Below are the before and after photos of the Rice truck. Once the car hit them, it took just a moment to transform the before truck into the after truck. A moment before the car hit them, it was just another day on the road.
If this happened to you, how long would it take you to recover your information, notify your vendors, get new cards and IDs, etc.? If your truck and everything in it were burned or stolen, how would you get your transportation, shelter, communications and business going again?
Pick a state not your own. You are out on the road with your truck, far from home, then, in an instant, your truck, cell phone, computer, ID's, money, clothes, toiletries, and credit, debit and fuel cards, and everything else in the truck are gone. It might be a crash like the Rices's. It might be you leaving a movie and finding your truck gone from the parking lot.
Are you prepared? The more recovery information you have backed up and/or kept on file, the better prepared you will be.
