I am dating myself, but I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s when it was an “in” thing to go to a shopping mall and hang out. That seemed to be the most exciting way we small-town teenagers could spend our social time. The mall boom always delivered throngs of shoppers around the holidays, certain to bring great parking karma to those who were lucky enough to find spots closest to the door. Imagine that same scenario playing out across the country today for our professional drivers, who have to scramble for safe places to park their trucks.
The less-crowded malls were ones that few really wanted to visit—and the same is true of truck parking. The highly traveled freight corridors in this country make safe and secure truck parking a challenge and something that should be planned for well in advance, but there can be an abundance of spots along less-traveled routes.
See also: Industry still behind in race for enough truck parking spaces
It's no secret that the need for safe and secure truck parking has risen in terms of drivers’ priorities recently. In the e-commerce economy, freight volume has increased tremendously and shows no sign of letting up, and ATRI has identified truck parking as the No. 1 issue for commercial drivers. This ties with compensation, which for years occupied the top spot all by itself. The data that trucks are generating now highlights the truck parking problem even more.
There’s about one parking spot for every 11 professional truck drivers operating on our roads today, causing them to dedicate around 56 minutes of drive time looking for a place to park. Those 56 minutes are time spent not advancing loads to their destinations but instead hunting for premium real estate. This equates to nearly $5,500 in lost driver wages per year just to find spots to stop. With the supply chain in crisis, solving this problem would go a long way toward addressing the inefficiencies that drivers may face when detention time also comes into play.
Almost all truck drivers—98%—have reported that they regularly experience problems finding parking, and this often leads to noncompliance because safe and secure spots cannot be found. Just travel the interstates and see trucks parked on on-ramps and off-ramps to get their regulated rest, but often in a manner that is wholly deemed unsafe because of those with which we share the road.
See also: ATA, OOIDA join forces to advocate for more truck parking
The infrastructure law dedicated much money toward roads and bridges, but truck parking usually is not at the front of the line when those dollars are dispersed. Discretionary federal funding that has been distributed to states for local projects certainly comes into play. However, with the current inflation the country is seeing and the effect on pricing, the infrastructure/discretionary funding won’t go nearly as far as originally planned. If a fuel-tax "holiday" were ever to become a reality, that means even less money, leaving truck parking as a very real problem in desperate need of a solution. And dedicated funding has been proposed; in fact, a House bill introduced last year, the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act, would have set aside dollars strictly to ease the truck parking emergency. But that bill was never incorporated into the larger Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law in November.
By regulation, truck parking is a necessity, not a luxury. Finding safe places to pull off the road should never have become the epidemic that it is today. We can all agree that this problem is growing in intensity, so we must come together, with support from our congressional leadership and friends at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, to resolve this challenge.
Dedicated funding, streamed specifically for this issue, will demonstrate that the needs of our highway heroes must be met, and the daily task of locating a spot to achieve the basic necessities of the job can be satisfied. As an industry whose main objective is making the lives of professional truck drivers easier, we should all insist that Congress rise to the occasion and solve this conundrum.
David Heller is the senior vice president of safety and government affairs at the Truckload Carriers Association. Heller has worked for TCA since 2005, initially as director of safety and most recently as the VP of government affairs.
