According to a 2019 Jason’s Law Survey, there are only 313,000 truck parking spots in the continental United States to accommodate the more than 1.94 million for-hire trucks on the nation’s roads and highways. Not surprisingly, 98% of truck drivers reported having problems finding truck parking.
But over the past year, paid truck parking has become a reality for truck drivers. These locations provide clean and safe facilities for drivers to park their trucks and trailers overnight or longer.
While fleets have used drop yards for decades, the new focus is on providing private, paid truck parking for mid-size and small fleets, something the trucking industry sorely needs.
One of the market leaders is Truck Parking Club, a website and mobile app that helps truck drivers reserve and pay independent truck parking lot owners for overnight or more extended parking. According to the company, the app is adding an average of two new locations per day, each providing slightly more than 30 parking spots.
As of May 30, 2024, Truck Parking Club has 414 locations offering 13,134 spots. The company prides itself in providing “never before publicly available parking spaces.”
According to Evan Shelley, founder and CEO of Truck Parking Club, more than 3,000 trucking spots on the app were previously unavailable for public parking. In recent months, the percentage of these spots available for truck parking has increased due to the success other property owners have seen with the app.
Truck Parking Club has made it easy for truck drivers to book parking spaces, and truck parking lot owners to collect their fees, which was challenging before the app was created.
The ease of use and collection has attracted new fleets and lot owners, which is desperately needed by the industry. Nonetheless, the lack of safe and secure truck parking costs truck drivers time and money.
Truck drivers spend 58 minutes each day trying to find parking, resulting in an average of $5,500 in lost compensation per year per driver. Because ELD devices measure every hour of on-duty time, the issue is even more significant because the time drivers spend looking for parking cuts into their 11 hours of legal driving time.
In fact, in the American Transportation Research Institute’s (ATRI) 2023 survey of truck drivers’ top issues, truck parking ranked second, right behind the economy.
Also, according to a tweet by the American Trucking Associations’ (ATA) official X account, truck parking first appeared on the ATRI survey in 2012 and has been a top 5 issue for truck drivers ever since.
Trucking associations like the ATA, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Women in Trucking, and state agencies like the Georgia Department of Transportation have been pushing for increased federal funding for truck parking, with limited results.
In the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, $300 million was allocated to multiple states for truck parking. While this sounds impressive, it only generated 1,000 new truck parking spots.
While the industry will welcome the additional parking, the new government-funded spots will only partially address the overall truck parking issue.
Why?
The trucking industry is growing much faster than the number of available parking spots. From 2009 to 2024, the industry added 69,000 new for-hire trucks to the national fleet annually, or an average of 1,335 trucks per week. While not every one of these trucks needs a parking space (because some park at company facilities or are out of service), the need for safe parking continues to grow.
Assuming state governments build the 1,000 new truck parking spots over the course of a year, the industry will have added another 69,000 for-hire trucks. In other words, the federal and state governments’ investment in truck parking is wholly insufficient to handle the industry’s parking needs.
That reality requires private sector solutions to solve the truck parking problem. The industry needs Truck Parking Club and other companies to provide private, for-hire parking.
This is only possible because private real estate owners are incentivized to set aside locations for public truck parking. If paid truck parking becomes a significant source of revenue, we could see the emergence of an entirely new type of industrial real estate.
But the idea of charging for truck parking has some truck drivers enraged.
Desiree, an outspoken critic of a number of the industry’s organizations and participants, attacked the concept on X:
However, Desiree and other drivers who do not want to pay for parking fail to understand that the only way to generate investment in private truck parking is to make it attractive enough for landowners to invest in truck parking spaces. If they can’t turn a profit on their land, they have no incentive to provide truck parking, and therefore, the industry will continue to suffer from a lack of parking.
Dominick Tullo described the issues with investing in trucking parking on his X account:
Dominick is right.
The only way to look at the truck parking issue is through the eyes of landowners. If we want more public parking available for drivers, the investment needs to be appealing and something that a bank would underwrite. The only way to do this is to ensure that truck parking is profitable.
Truck Parking Club has made three times as many spots available to truck drivers as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act did, without taking a single penny in taxpayer money.
Moreover, the app, which was launched in 2022, is just now gaining momentum.
The best feature of Truck Parking Club for drivers is that it eliminates the need to drive around and search for available parking spots, which can be tedious and expensive. After all, if drivers can see which locations are available and book a spot early in the day, they can continue their runs later in the night when the roads are less congested.
After all, the cost of lost wages, time, and fuel, not to mention the driver’s frustration in searching for a safe parking spot, is often more expensive than the overnight parking fee.
The market always finds a way — that is how capitalism works.
Disclosure: Craig Fuller is an adviser to Truck Parking Club
David
First off take the “clean and safe” part out of the conversation! Secondly one of the other problems I’ve seen in the last few years are the closing of state rest areas which we’re free! Lastly is the flooding of trucks on the road with the so call “trucker shortage” which was nothing more than a reason to flood the market to make rates cheaper.
Ted
You say look at it through the eyes of landowners I say look at it through The eyes of truck drivers. The one truck parking club lot I have used had no trash cans. No restroom facilities no lights and no security. It was trashy smelly and charged a dollar an hour to park there. And no advanced reservations
Jim
Ok it is a good idea but it has some issues, company drivers, paying out of pocket to park the company equipment. We already pay Outrageous prices for food on the road. Work 14 hour days 70 hours a week for minimum wages. There are many issues that I could talk about. Other issues are drivers themselves, throwing their trash out everywhere dumping pee bottles out in the parking lots or just peeing on the ground.
Debbie Dingo
The truck parking situation is one of the key issues that is driving many veteran drivers out of the industry.
John Griffith
Thank the lord I got out of trucking. I believe it’s BS to be paying for parking spots every night. The prices to park are ridiculous and can’t make a honest living spending $15-$20 or more a night to park. Owner operators and Lease drivers may be able to afford that but not company drivers. I would rather work fast food than waste my time and money over the road anymore. Your away from your family damaging your health and spend half your check on food and parking. I’m never driving truck again.
Jeremy crabb
This so called club is in truck stops that have parking already. Now if you was Mr brown with a large area that you are not using I get it. But in a fuel stop????
D l
The problem is all the Canadians over here. Before we got screwed with NAFTA, there were plenty of spaces. Wanna charge someone for parking, charge the Canadians.
RICHARD A SCHAEFER
What is it going to take? Bringing all of North America to it’s knees when the Truck no longer arrives to replenish the Shelvs with life substaning products? NO gass? No Groceries? No clothes? A big fat void of workers to put up with the compleat and popular contemt for something Everybody needs to Live! THE TRUCK DRIVER! You people should be paying The driver and give thanks that you’re land is lucky to serve and help a tired driver. Sacrificing his family life, social life, the risk alone of the job. His health even, what a bunch of spoiled ungrateful money loving blind pigs, the nerve. Go,keep it up, When trucks stop, America stops.